Nine prodigious stories that explore the complexity and paradoxes of the human soul. The author of The Reader is still in top form.

This book brings together nine dazzling stories that present a detailed catalog of human attitudes and emotions. It begins with some pioneering scientists in the field of artificial intelligence in communist Germany, with the Stasi and remorse in the background, and other stories follow: that of the man who impassively watches the evolution of the romance of a young neighbor to whom he gave classes when I was a child, sensing that it cannot end well; that of the son who discovers the true face of his mother during a summer vacation on an island and in this way he also discovers himself; that of the music teacher who has a chance encounter with a woman he was in love with, from which a secret emerges and perhaps the possibility of returning to the past; that of the stepfather who faces his lesbian daughter's desire to have children; that of the man who must assimilate the death of his brother, who has been almost a stranger to him...

Bernhard Schlink, as he already did in his international bestseller The Reader and in his subsequent books, continues here the meticulous and subtle exploration of the weaknesses and longings of human beings: love, fear of the passage of time, guilt, self-deception , the dreams that evaporate, the pain of loss, the emotional ties that keep us afloat...

In this case he does it through stories that are prodigious chamber pieces, constructed with elegance, precision and infinite nuances, in which one can appreciate his psychological depth, his marvelous management of emotions, his insight in posing moral dilemmas. .. The result is a well-rounded book, which shows us the writer in his full powers, as one of the great active European storytellers.