Archive notice: This article was originally published on September 17, 2007. Links and embedded videos are preserved as part of the historical record.
Filming begins at the end of this year in Berlin, with Stephen Daldry (including “The Hours”, “Billy Elliot – I Will Dance”) directing. Senator thus expands its Slate 2008 with another title featuring a top-class cast.
Marco Weber, Senator board member, on this: „The Reader is a great literary basis for a film adaptation by Stephen Daldry with Nicole Kidman. The collaboration between the two already worked superbly on THE HOURS. I am very glad that through close cooperation with the Weinsteins we were able to secure the film adaptation for exploitation in Germany and Austria.“
In the novel published in 1995, Schlink deals with German history of the Second World War – a fundamental discussion on the subject of the extermination of the Jews and dealing with the perpetrators is positioned in a forceful way and in connection with a love story. At the same time, the book also deals with a generational conflict of the 50s.
The book represents one of the few bestsellers by German authors on the American book market. The Reader was translated into more than 39 languages and was the first German book to make it to number 1 on the New York Times bestseller list.
With this book, the professor of law at Berlin’s Humboldt University succeeded in describing a, if not the German lie about life and was awarded the Federal Cross of Merit for it.
