"The Granddaughter" is Bernhard Schlink’s last novel, by the author of the acclaimed "The Reader"—a piercing story about the collision of generations, the impossibility of forgetting one’s past, and the paradoxes of love and time.
Kaspar and Birgit spent their entire lives together. Many years ago, she ran to him—from East Berlin to West Berlin—on the way to love and freedom. Yet only now, at the edge of old age, Kaspar was destined to learn the price Birgit had to pay for her escape. One day, returning home, Kaspar finds his wife in the bathroom—she has taken her own life. In search of answers, Kaspar plunges into the woman’s past, whom he believed he knew well. One question gives rise to another; Kaspar’s investigation leads him to strange, dark places where the past comes back to life…