NEW EVENTS

Homecoming by Bernhard Schlink

Discussion questions

  • ‘If you can do the right thing only by being underhanded, being underhanded doesn’t make it wrong.’ Doesn’t it?
  • Homecoming as a concept informs the novel on many levels. How has the author used it?
  • ‘Justice be done though the world perish.’ Why is Peter so strong in his belief? Is it because of Germany’s experience?
  • ‘I became painfully aware of how false a world it was.’ Is it? Or is it just true for Peter? Or Germany?
  • What role does déjà vu play in the novel?
  • ‘Do women have some primordial fear of being identified with their menfolk’s mothers?’ They do, don’t they? Why?

Suggested further reading

The Odyssey by Homer
Homecomings: Returning POWs and the Legacies of Defeat in Postwar Germany by Frank Beiss
Kleider Machen Leute (Clothes Make the Man) by Gottfried Keller
The Return of Martin Guerre by Natalie Zemon Davis
The End of the Third Reich by Toby Thacker
Carl & Anna, with In the Last Coach by Leonhard Frank