The Return

9 hrs. 28 min.

Romance & Prose

Language Russian

Author Bernhard Schlink

Narrator Sergey Kirsanov

Description

Bernhard Schlink’s second novel, “Homecoming” (“The Return”), like the beloved books “The Reader” and “Other Man,” explores love and betrayal, good and evil, fairness and justice. But the novel’s central theme is the hero’s return home. What else, if not the dream of a home, keeps a person going through endless travels filled with dangerous adventures, fantastic transformations, and clever deception? Yet the hero is not given to know what awaits him beyond the trials at his doorstep—whether his beautiful wife remains faithful to him, or whether his place has long been taken by a double impostor.

Immersed in Homer’s “Odyssey” and in a novel by an unnamed author about a German soldier escaping from Siberian captivity, young Peter Debauer has no idea that fate provides him with a thread—tugging on which, perhaps, he will be able to unravel the tangle of truths and lies connected to the fate of his father, who is either missing or dead in the war. Will Peter be able to uncover the author’s secret and learn who served as the model for the soldier-hero? Will he be able to find his father and understand what he is really like—and how will Peter’s life change after all the twists and shocking revelations? Will he find love and a home of his own?