The Weekend

by Bernhard Schlink

Translated from the original German by Shaun Whiteside

Old friends and lovers reunite for a weekend in a secluded country home after spending decades apart.

They excavate old memories and pass clandestine judgments on the wildly divergent paths they’ve taken since their youth. But this isn’t just any reunion, and their conversations about the old days aren’t your typical reminiscences: After twenty-four years, Jörg, a convicted murderer and terrorist, has been released from prison. The announcement of his pardon will send shock waves through the country, but before the announcement, his friends—some of whom were Baader-Meinhof sympathizers or those who clung to them—gather for his first weekend of freedom. They have been summoned by Jörg’s devoted sister, Christiane, whose concern for her brother’s safety is matched only by the unrelenting zeal of Marko, a young man intent on having Jörg continue to fight for the cause.

Bernhard Schlink is at his finest as The Weekend unfolds. Passions are pitted against pragmatism, ideas against actions, and hopes against heartbreaking realities.

(From Publisher).

Bernhard Schlink was born in Germany. He is the author of the internationally bestselling novels The Reader and Homecoming, as well as the collection of short stories Flights of Love and four prizewinning crime novels—The Gordian Knot, Self's Deception, Self's Punishment, and Self’s Murder. He lives in Berlin and New York.

A deep exploration if interrelation between past and present and of the senselessness of terrorism. The translator expertly rendered the merging of sense of history with the refined psychological insight inherent in the original text.