This little book of 141pages is based on the Weidenfeld Lectures given by Bernhard Schlink at Oxford University in 2008. The six lectures are entitled “Collective Guilt”; “The Presence of the Past”; “Mastering the Past through Law”; “Forgiveness and Reconciliation”; “Prudence and Corruption”; and “Stories about the Past”.

He is a writer and a professor of public law and legal philosophy; for many years he was also a judge at a German constitutional court. He was born in 1944, grew up in Heidelberg, lived in Germany, France, and the USA and now teaches at Humboldt University in Berlin and at the Benjamin N Cardozo School of Law in New York. He began publishing crime novels in 1987 and other fiction in 1995. His first fiction to appear in English was his novel “The Reader” (1997). Since then his collection of stories, “Flights of Love”, another novel, “Homecoming”, and the trilogy about the private detective Gerhard Self, “Self’s Punishment” and “Self’s Betrayal”, “Self’s Murder”; and his most recent novel, “The Weekend” released during 2010.

When you look at this body of work, and in particular “The Reader” it is clear he has spent a great deal of time thinking about “guilt” and the transference of guilt from one generation to the next. Do we all carry the mark of Cain? As an Anglo-Celt Australian am I responsible for the near extinction and genocide of Aboriginal Australians? How does one reconcile the children of the perpetrators with the children of the victims? Assuming (a big assumption I know) we are all acting in good faith how do we move on? This little book gives you serious cause to stop and think about these fundamental issues.

This is an excellent book and it is highly recommended to anyone who might be interested in these issues. ( )