Der Vorleser

She is irritable, mysterious, and much older than him, and she will become his first passion. She desperately guards a secret. One day, she disappears without a trace. Years later, he sees her again. The almost criminal investigation of a peculiar love and a haunting past.

When I was fifteen, I had jaundice. The illness began in the autumn and ended in the spring. The colder and darker the old year became, the weaker I grew. Only with the new year did things start to improve. January was warm, and my mother set up my bed on the balcony. I watched the sky, the sun, the clouds, and listened to the children playing in the yard. One early evening in February, I heard a blackbird singing.

My first path led me from Blumenstrasse, where we lived on the second floor of a massive house built around the turn of the century, to Bahnhofstrasse. There, on a Monday in October, I had thrown up on my way home from school. I had been weak for days, weaker than I had ever been in my life. Every step cost me energy. When I climbed stairs at home or at school, my legs could barely carry me. I also didn't want to eat. Even when I sat down at the table feeling hungry, soon enough, I felt a strong aversion. In the mornings, I woke up with a dry mouth and the feeling that my organs lay heavy and wrong within me. I was ashamed.