The Reader

The story of Michael Berg, a German lawyer who, as a teenager in the late 1950s, had an affair with an older woman, Hanna, who then disappeared only to resurface years later as one of the defendants in a war crimes trial stemming from her actions as a concentration camp guard late in the war. He alone realizes that Hanna is illiterate and may be concealing that fact at the expense of her freedom.

• based on novel or book
• germany
• war crimes
• world war ii
• women's prison
• trial
• female prisoner
• reading aloud
• love affair
• cynical
• law student
• teenage sexuality
• older woman younger man relationship
• reading to someone
• secret lover
• shame
• literacy
• frantic
• west germany
• courtroom drama
• complex
• cautionary
• depressing
• cruel
• disheartening
• embarrassed
• tragic