The Granddaughter

May, 1964. At a youth festival in East Berlin, an unlikely young couple fall in love. In the bright spring days, anything seems possible for them – it is only many years later, after her death, that Kaspar discovers the price his wife paid to get to him in West Berlin.

Shattered by grief, Kaspar sets off to uncover Birgit's secrets in the East. His search leads him to a rural community of neo-Nazis, and to a young girl who accepts him as her grandfather. Their worlds could not be more different – but he is determined to fight for her.

From the author of the number one international bestseller The Reader, The Granddaughter is a gripping novel that transports us from the divided Germany of the 1960s to contemporary Australia, asking what might be found when it seems like all is lost.

Translated from the German by Charlotte Collins

About the Author

Bernhard Schlink was born in Germany in 1944. A professor emeritus of law at Humboldt University, Berlin, and Cardozo Law School, New York, he is the author of the internationally bestselling novels The Reader, which became an Oscar-winning film starring Kate Winslet and Ralph Fiennes, and The Woman on the Stairs. His latest novel, Olga, was a number one international bestseller. He lives in Berlin and New York.

About the Translator

Charlotte Collins studied English Literature at Cambridge University and worked as an actor and radio journalist in Germany and the UK before becoming a literary translator. Her co-translation, with Ruth Martin, of Nino Haratischvili’s The Eighth Life won the Warwick Prize for Women in Translation, and in 2017 she was awarded the Goethe-Institut’s Helen and Kurt Wolff Translator’s Prize for Robert Seethaler’s A Whole Life. Other translations include Seethaler’s The Tobacconist, Homeland by Walter Kempowski, and Olga by Bernhard Schlink.

Dimensions: 16.2 x 3.4 x 23.6 cm