Holocaust as Fiction Bernhard Schlink's "Nazi" Novels and Their Films

William Collins Donahue teaches at Duke University, where he is associate professor in German Studies and in the Program in Literature. He serves on the Jewish Studies Executive Committee and is chair of the Department of Germanic Languages & Literature. He is author of The End of Modernism (2001) and co-editor of the Amsterdamer Beiträge zur neueren Literatur.

"Much has been written about Schlink's 'Nazi' novels - the trilogy featuring Nazi-judge-turned-detective Gerhard Selb and the internationally famous The Reader, particularly the latter and its film version (2008) - but no one has written more discerningly about it than Donahue. His scholarship is thorough and his critique is unrelenting. Summing Up: Essential." - Choice

"William Donahue’s Holocaust as Fiction probes one of the most provocative phenomena of Holocaust remembrance at the turn of the millennium - Bernhard Schlink’s 1995 bestseller Der Vorleser (The Reader), followed by its popular 2008 film adaptation - in all its complexity. Central to Donahue’s analysis is his attention to The Reader not merely as a popular book or film, but as a site of extensive public discussion and cultural engagement, ranging from earnest pedagogical protocols to contentious critical debates. With incisive and lively prose, Donahue guides his readers through the evolution of Schlink’s literary approach to postwar Germany’s reconciliation with the Nazi past; the reception of the author, his fiction, and its adaptation for the screen; and, most importantly, the problematic establishment of The Reader as a landmark of Germany’s evolving engagement with the Nazi era and the Holocaust. In analyzing a literary work that proves to be deceptively facile, Donahue brings carefully nuanced attention to the many facets of the Vorleser phenomenon, explaining the various responses the novel has engendered as revealing, if sometimes disturbing, cultural enterprises in their own right. Beyond its essential value for those who have read, taught, or argued over Schlink’s work, Holocaust as Fiction is an important case study in the challenges of Holocaust remembrance both in Germany and America." - Jeffrey Shandler, author of While America Watches: Televising the Holocaust

"This book represents the first scholarly study to probe the ‘Schlink phenomenon’ and analyze its profound role in coming to terms with the Holocaust. Through deliberate and compelling analyses of Schlink’s novels (and their adaptation in film), Donahue dissects the seductive, transnational appeal of his work and the ways in which popular culture more generally has contributed to the success of Germany’s normalization campaign. A must read for anyone seriously interested in Holocaust studies." - Todd Samuel Presner, Professor of Germanic Languages and Comparative Literature, Director of the Center for Jewish Studies, University of California Los Angeles

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