New Bernard Schlink book comes from unlikely source

If I recall correctly, Bernhard Schlink’s The Reader was the hit of the 1994 Frankfurt Book Fair. It went on to be translated into 39 languages and become the first novel by a German to hit the top of the New York Times bestseller list. A film of the book starring Kate Winslet and Ralph Fiennes is currently in production, and is due for release next year. 

There is a new book by Schlink being offered at this year’s fair. It’s a powerful work of nonfiction called Guilt about the Past. In the book, which consists of six essays based on the Weidenfeld Lectures he gave at Oxford University earlier this year, Schlink explores the phenomenon of guilt and how it attaches to a whole society, not just to individual perpetrators. He considers how to use the lesson of history to motivate individual moral behaviour, how to reconcile a guilt-laden past, the role of law in this process and how the theme of guilt influences his own fiction. 

The book is coming from an unlikely source: Australia’s University of Queensland Press (UQP). In something of a coup, the press has been granted world English language rights by the author.

Interest in the book, which will be published in Australia in January 2009, has so far been ‘white hot … and people are getting out their calculators!’ UQP’s ebullient general manager Greg Bain told me yesterday. The interest will undoubtedly shed more light on this excellent press, which for 60 years has been publishing a wide range of quality adult and youth literature, as well as academic and adult nonfiction works, from its headquarters in Brisbane, Australia.

Posted in Authors, Book Fair, Deals, surprises