Homecoming

Zusatztext “ Homecoming ! fueled by a mystery! is also a powerful meditation on justice! history! and the nature of evil. . . . Schlink has written another lean! meticulously structured! disquieting thought-provoker.” — Los Angeles Times “A beguilingly oblique novel. . . . Despite its intricate! maze-like progression! Homecoming has surprising narrative thrust.” — The Economist “Sensitive and disturbing. . . . The reader's mind opens to the story like a plant unfurling its leaves to the sun.” — The New York Times Book Review "Plot twists and surprises and sometimes outright lies complicate the book's multilayered homecoming theme. . . . Schlink has woven a homecoming tale as fascinating as Homer's Odyssey ! its inspiration." — Seattle Times Informationen zum Autor Bernhard Schlink was born in Germany. He is the author of the internationally best-selling novel The Reader , which was an Oprah's Book Club selection. He lives in Berlin and New York. Klappentext Growing up with his mother in Germany, Peter Debauer knows little about his father, an apparent victim of the Second World War. But when he stumbles upon a few pages from a long-lost novel, Peter embarks on a quest that leads him across Europe to the United States, chasing fragments of a story within a story and a master of disguises who may or may not exist. Homecoming is a tale of fathers and sons, men and women, war and peace. It reveals the humanity that survives the trauma of war and the ongoing possibility for redemption. Leseprobe Chapter 1 When I was young, I spent the summer holidays with my grandparents in Switzerland. My mother would take me to the station and put me on the train, and when I was lucky I could stay put and arrive six hours later at the platform where Grandfather would be waiting for me. When I was less lucky, I had to change trains at the border. Once I took the wrong train and sat there in tears until a friendly conductor dried them and after a few stations put me on another train, entrusting me to another conductor, who then in similar fashion passed me on to the next, so that I was transported to my goal by a whole relay of conductors.I enjoyed those train trips: the vistas of passing towns and landscapes, the security of the compartment, the independence. I had ticket and passport, food and reading; I needed no one and had no one telling me what to do. In the Swiss trains I missed the compartments, but then every seat was either a window or aisle seat and I didn’t need to fear being squeezed between two people. Besides, the bright wood of the Swiss seats was smarter than the red-brown German plastic, just as the gray of the coaches, the trilingual inscription “SBB—CFF—FFS,” and the coat of arms with the white cross in the red field were nobler than the dirty green with the inscription “DB.” I was proud to be half Swiss even though I was more at home with both the shabbiness of the German trains and the shabbiness of the city my mother and I lived in and the people we lived with.The station of the city on the lake, the goal of my journey, was the end of the line. The moment I set foot on the platform I couldn’t miss Grandfather: he was a tall, powerful man with dark eyes, a bushy white mustache, and a bald pate, wearing an off-white linen jacket and straw hat and carrying a walking stick. He radiated reliability. I thought of him as tall even after I outgrew him and powerful even after he had to lean on the walking stick. As late as my student days he would occasionally take my hand during our walks. It made me uncomfortable but did not embarrass me.My grandparents lived a few towns away on the lake, and when the weather was fine Grandfather and I would take the boat there rather than the train. The boat I liked best was the big old paddle-steamer, the one that let you see the engine’s glistening oil-coated bronze-and-steel r...

Product details

• Authors: Bernhard Schlink
• Assisted by: Michael Henry Heim (Translation)
• Publisher: Vintage USA
• Languages: English
• Product format: Paperback / Softback
• Released: 06.01.2009
• EAN: 9780375725579
• ISBN: 978-0-375-72557-9
• No. of pages: 272
• Dimensions: 132 mm x 203 mm x 15 mm
• Series: Vintage International; Vintage International
• Subject: Fiction > Narrative literature