Guilt About The Past

From the author of the international bestselling novel The Reader comes a compelling collection of six essays exploring the long shadow of past guilt, not just a German experience, but a global one as well.

‘I know of no other writer who engages with the struggle between the individual and the political world as deftly - and poetically - as Bernhard Schlink.' - The Herald



Bernhard Schlink explores the phenomenon of guilt and how it attaches to a whole society, not just to individual perpetrators. He considers how to use the lesson of history to motivate individual moral behaviour, how to reconcile a guilt-laden past, the role of law in this process and how the theme of guilt influences his own fiction. Based on the Weidenfeld Lectures he delivered at Oxford University, Guilt about the Past is essential reading for anyone wanting to understand how events of the past can affect a nation’s future. Written in Bernhard Schlink’s eloquent but accessible style, it taps in to worldwide interest in the aftermath of war and how to forgive and reconcile the various legacies of the past.