Holocaust as Fiction Bernhard Schlinks Nazi Novels and Their Films [Hardcover]

Holocaust as Fiction seeks to explain and critically evaluate the extraordinary success of Schlink's internationally acclaimed novel, The Reader , the widely read Selb detective trilogy, and two popular films based closely on his work.Introduction: Mighty Aphrodite - Or How to Have it Both Ways * Resister after the Fact : Schlink's Selb Trilogy and the Culture of Politically Correct Holocaust Literature * Soothing Fictions: Ambiguity as Defense * What Would You Have Done? : Guilt as Virtue * Fathers & Sons: Two Kinds of Second Generation Victim * The Holocaust's Afterlife in Contemporary German Literature: Select Case Studies * The Reader as an American Novel * The Hollywood Reader

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

Holocaust as Fiction is, to this reviewer's knowledge, currently the most sophisticated work of English-language scholarship in existence on the Schlink phenomenon and should be required reading on the topic. - German Studies Review

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 GelÃ"