The Granddaughter -- Bernhard Schlink

<p><strong>"Anyone who wants to understand contemporary Germany must read <em>The Granddaughter</em> now" --<em>Le Monde</em></strong></p><p><strong>"The great novel of German reunification" --<em>Le Figaro</em></strong></p><p><strong>From the bestselling author of <em>The Reader</em>, a striking exploration of the wounds of the past, told through the story of a German bookseller's attempt to connect with his radicalized granddaughter.</strong></p><p>It is only after the sudden death of his wife, Birgit, that Kaspar discovers the price she paid years earlier when she fled East Germany to join him: she had to abandon her baby. Shattered by grief, yet animated by a new hope, Kaspar closes up his bookshop in present day Berlin and sets off to find her lost child in the east.</p><p>His search leads him to a rural community of neo-Nazis, intent on reclaiming and settling ancestral lands to the East. Among them, Kaspar encounters Svenja, a woman whose eyes, hair, and even voice remind him of Birgit. Beside her is a red-haired, slouching, fifteen-year-old girl. His granddaughter? Their worlds could not be more different-- an ideological gulf of mistrust yawns between them-- but he is determined to accept her as his own.</p><p>More than twenty-five years after <em>The Reader</em>, Bernhard Schlink once again offers a masterfully gripping novel that powerfully probes the past's role in contemporary life, transporting us from the divided Germany of the 1960s to modern day Australia, a