I was excited therefore to encounter Schlink’s latest book to be translated into English. Even though I read it almost 25 years ago, I remember it well. Like many other readers, I first encountered Bernhard Schlink as the author of The Reader, a book which certainly had an emotional impact on me.
Translated from the German by Charlotte Collins … ( more) Told in three distinct parts, brilliantly shifting from different points of view and narrative formats, Bernhard Schlink's magnificent novel is a rich, full portrait of a singular woman and her world. Though Olga exists in the shadows of others, she pursues life to the fullest and her magnetic presence shines-revealing a woman complex, fascinating, and unforgettable. Her love for Herbert goes against all odds and encounters many obstacles, but even when they are separated, it endures Unfolding across decades-from the late nineteenth to the early twenty-first century-and across continents-from Germany to Africa and the Arctic, from the Baltic Sea to the German south-west-Olga is an epic romance, and a wrenching tale of a woman's devotion to a restless man in an age of constant change. While Herbert indulges his thirst for exploration and adventure, Olga is limited by her gender and circumstance. When Olga falls in love with her neighbor, Herbert, the son of a local aristocrat, her life is irremediably changed. Smart and precocious, endearing but uncompromising, she fights against ingrained chauvinism to find her place in a world run by lesser men. Abandoned by her parents, young Olga is raised by her grandmother in a Prussian village in the early years of the twentieth century. A sweeping novel of love and passion from author of the international bestseller The Reader about a woman out of step with her time, whose life is witness to some of the most tumultuous events of modern age.
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