Homecoming shares some of the themes from The Reader, Schlinks highly successful novel from 10 years ago, dealing with the “scars of history” in the wake of the Second World War. The main character goes on a journey to find out what happened to his German father in World War II with his travels reflecting some experiences of Homer’s Odysseus in The Odyssey. Not all the allusions may be clear for those not familiar with Homer, but it still makes for a moving and thought provoking story.
As a child raised by his mother in post-war Germany, Peter Debauer becomes fascinated by a story he discovers in the proof pages of a novel edited by his grandparents. It is the tale of a German prisoner of war who escapes from a Russian camp and braves countless dangers to return home to a wife who believes him to be dead.
But the novel is incomplete - Peter has inadvertently used the end pages of the proof for his homework - and he becomes obsessed by the question of what happened when the soldier and his wife met again.
Years later, the adult Peter remembers the novel and embarks on a search for the missing pages that soon becomes a search for his own father, a German soldier whom he always believed was killed in the war. Peter's quest leads him into a love story of his own, and as he begins to unravel the mystery of his father's disappearance, he is forced to question his own identity. He learns that reality is sometimes a reflection of the expectations of others, and that truth and fiction often intertwine.
Bernhard Schlink was born in Germany is 1944. A professor of law at Humboldt University, Berlin and Cardozo Law School, New York, he is the author of the major international bestselling novel and movie The Reader, short story collection Flights of Love and several prize-winning crime novels. He lives in Berlin and New York.
