Illusions of subtlety: Bernhard Schlink's Der 'Vorleser' and the moral limits of Holocaust fiction

In presenting the case of SS guard Hanna Schmitz from the perspective of he r young lover, Bernhard Schlink's award-winning Der Vorleser would seem to represent that cutting edge of Holocaust literature interested in depicting per-petrators in a more nuanced fashion. However, this gesture toward comp lexity a welcome trend in itself is not ultimately supported by the text, w hich insistently obscures Hanna's role in a series of crimes against humani ty. The likeable narrator's attempt to come to terms with the Holocaust, wh ich is espoused as exemp-lary, proves in the end to rely on a problematic c onception of dual victimisation: of Hanna as victim of circumstance, and of himself as victim of Hanna. This essay draws liberally upon reception data in order to discover the manner in which the novel exploits a number of en trenched assumptions on the part of readers. Chief among these are 1) the d iffuse sense that confronting the Holocaust presents a demanding burden, re ndering present day observers as victims of a sort; and 2) the presuppositi on that moral sophistication an attribute with which Der Vorleser has been frequently credited is tantamount to indecision or undecidability. The real 'limits' to Holocaust fiction are thus found to inhere within both the cri tical climate and the unfulfilled ambitions of the novel.