Guilt about the past
Record details
- ISBN: 9780887849596
-
Physical Description:
print
156 p. ; cm. - Publisher: Toronto : House of Anansi Press, 2010.
Search for related items by subject
Subject: | Guilt -- Social aspects Guilt and culture -- Germany |
Available copies
- 3 of 3 copies available at Sitka.
Holds
- 0 current holds with 0 total copies.
Other Formats and Editions
Location | Call Number / Copy Notes | Barcode | Shelving Location | Holdable? | Status | Due Date |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Invermere Public Library | 170 SCH (Text) | IPL041961 | Adult Non Fiction | Volume hold | Available | - |
Birch River | 170 SC (Text) | 35419002017102 | Adult Non-Fiction | Volume hold | Available | - |
Trail and District Public Library Main Branch | 170 SCH (Text) | 35110000388914 | Adult Non-Fiction | Volume hold | Available | - |
- Booklist Reviews : Booklist Reviews 2010 June #1
The author of the best-selling Holocaust novel The Reader (1997) moves to nonfiction as he discusses Germans' guilt about their past in a series of six lectures he delivered at Oxford University in 2008. The academic jargon is sometimes heavy ("the norms considered in the course of my deliberations"), but readers can skip the minutiae of legal scholarship and get to the gripping moral issues of collective guilt. What about those who did nothing? And what about those who, afterward, did not renounce the perpetrators? What about the children and grandchildren today: Can there be forgiveness and reconciliation? Has the obsession with the Holocaust resulted in banality? Can there be retroactive justice? Schlink admits that he, too, feels guilty that he has gone along with things because he does not want to escalate the conflict and irritate the silent majority. And fans of The Reader will welcome his reply to the critics who say he should not have humanized his character, Hanna, the former camp guard who committed monstrous acts. His answer is that every book does not have to tell the full truth, as long as it doesn't pretend to be more than it is. He hates Life Is Beautiful but praises Shoah and Primo Levi. This is great for book-discussion groups, especially those engaged with The Reader. The issues of authenticity and literary truth are universal, and so is the haunting guilt. Copyright 2010 Booklist Reviews. - Library Journal Reviews : LJ Reviews 2010 April #2
Based on a series of lectures that Schlink (constitutional law, Humboldt Univ., Berlin; The Reader) delivered at Oxford University, these six essays grapple with the question of guilt, particularly collective guilt as understood in the aftermath of the Nazi genocides. Schlink brings his knowledge of both law and fiction to bear on this difficult subject. While he writes that guilt is universal and not limited to German history and national consciousness, German guilt permeates his work, although other national histories do figure in his writing, with references to Rwanda, the Stalinist USSR, and South African apartheid. Schlink's essays tackle the complexities of guilt: how the actions of individual perpetrators become another generation's guilt; the connection between past and present; fiction, literature and truth; how individuals live with and overcome past guilt; and the role of law. His legal analysis complements Ian Buruma's The Wages of Guilt: Memories of War in Germany and Japan. VERDICT Recommended for readers and researchers interested in the philosophical questions surrounding national atrocities, trauma, collective guilt, reconciliation, and the Nazi genocides.âKaren Okamoto, John Jay Coll. of Criminal Justice Lib., New York
[Page 95]. Copyright 2010 Reed Business Information.