The Weekend
Das Wochenende

das wochenende bernhard schlink
Diogenes Verlag
March 2008 / 240pp
Fiction

This book is outside of the five-year window for guaranteed assistance with English language translation. We suggest getting in touch with the relevant funding body for an informal conversation about the possibility of support. Please refer to to our  recommendations page for books that are currently covered by our funding guarantee.

Download this page as a PDF

review

After 20 years in prison, Jorg, a Red Army Fraction terrorist who has committed four murders, is suddenly pardoned and released. His sister Christiane invites a group of his former friends to a weekend at her dilapidated house in the country to welcome him back.

Twenty years before, each of these friends had revolutionary ideals. Now each of them has a secure place in society. Henner has become a journalist, Andreas is a lawyer, Ulrich a businessman, Karin a bishop and Ilse a teacher. Their wives and children, a present-day revolutionary sympathiser called Marco, and Jorg’s estranged son Ferdinand are also of the party. Das Wochenende examines how their feelings have changed in the interval. It debates both the validity of Jorg’s political aims, and how these aims now appear, post 9/11 and Iraq. It is also a psychological examination of the neuroses, passions and fears of its characters.

The basic plot of Das Wochenende is exciting, its subject matter timely, and its treatment assured. Back to old times.

press quotes

‘Schlink has won his huge popular following by bringing to bear a penetrating intelligence about the psyche of his characters and an empathy for their dilemmas.’– Newsweek

about the author

Bernhard Schlink was born in 1944 in Bielefeld, Germany. A lawyer, he now lives partly in Berlin and partly in New York. He published his first crime novel, Self’s Punishment, with co-author Walter Popp in 1987. After the publication of his of its prizewinning successors Die gordische Schleife (‘The Gordian Knot’) and Self’s Deception, he moved on from the crime field. His novel The Reader, published in 1995, has won prizes both at home and abroad and is now being filmed. Homecoming, his second novel, has just been published in the UK.

rights information

Diogenes Verlag AG
Sprecherstr. 8,
8032 Zurich, Switzerland
Tel: +41 44 254 8511
Email: bau@diogenes.ch
Contact: Susanne Bauknecht
www.diogenes.ch

Diogenes Verlag was founded in Zurich in 1952 by Daniel Keel and Rudolf C. Bettschart. One of the leading international publishing houses, it numbers among its authors Alfred Andersch, Friedrich Dürrenmatt, Urs Widmer, Patricia Highsmith, Donna Leon, Bernhard Schlink and Patrick Süskind. Children’s authors include Tatjana Hauptmann, Ute Krause, Karl Friedrich Waechter and Tomi Ungerer.

translation assistance

share this recommendation

Share this on twitter, facebook or via mail.

All recommendations from Spring 2008