The Reader

Content Warning: This guide summarizes and discusses suicide, statutory rape, the Holocaust, and Nazi brutality, which feature in the source text.

Michael Berg is a 15-year-old boy. He lives in West Germany with his mother, father, older brother, and two sisters. On his way home from school in October during the late 1950s, he throws up. He tries to keep the vomit in his mouth, but it gushes out on the side of a building on Bahnhofstrasse (a street near his home). An older woman comes to his aid. She pulls him into a courtyard and washes him and the building. Michael cries, and the woman holds him. She walks him home, where he convalesces for the next few months with hepatitis. When he has finally recovered, his mother encourages him to see the woman and express gratitude for her help.

As an adult, Michael reflects on the building on Bahnhofstrasse. In the 1970s or 80s, a new building replaced the old one. The new building has plaster on the outside. It contains tiny apartments and renters that don’t seem to stay long. Beneath the homes, there’s a computer store.

The old building featured bricks, arches, and balconies.