Take a photo of a barcode or cover
A review by deea_bks
The Weekend by Bernhard Schlink
2.0
This is unfortunately an average book, not even by far half as good as the others I read by Schlink. Some friends meet somewhere in the countryside to welcome back to freedom a terrorist who has been pardoned after 30 years of imprisonment. They all had been part of the same group of friends before he, the terrorist, Jorg, started his part in the cause he fought for (he had been a part of RAF- The German Red Army Faction). At present, they all have trouble accepting his murders and feel awkward around him. He himself feels awkward being among them.
They all wonder if a struggle that doesn’t lead to success justifies its victims and discuss about it and they ponder whether the sacrifice of innocent people would have been justified if a better, fairer world had been created through a revolution. If I hadn't seen "Baader Meinhof Complex", the movie about the revolutionary movement from the story, I wouldn't have probably known much about RAF. But having seen it and knowing more about the violence it implied, I was somehow prejudiced against Jorg, the pardoned terrorist, from the very beginning and I couldn't help thinking in the end, when he told them all he was terminally ill that this served him right.
In the history of humanity there have been so many victims among innocent people that I cannot help but wonder: isn't there a way to bring change, to have a revolution and change a bad situation through diplomacy, without having to kill people? Are these victims collateral damage and aren't they as important as the ones for whose good the ones implied in revolutions fight for? What would differentiate them? Are the people implied in revolutions fighting for common good or only for an ideal (in which situation, if you cannot reach an ideal without killing people, shouldn't you rather be considered a part of a more largely defined "homo homini lupus" group)?
I liked the subject of this book, but I thought it was not well-written enough as to express strongly the dilemmas that the author wanted to express. His rhetorical questions are not deduced easily and his story is a bit unfocused. I would have insisted more on the inner development of the characters after their mate's imprisonment.
They all wonder if a struggle that doesn’t lead to success justifies its victims and discuss about it and they ponder whether the sacrifice of innocent people would have been justified if a better, fairer world had been created through a revolution. If I hadn't seen "Baader Meinhof Complex", the movie about the revolutionary movement from the story, I wouldn't have probably known much about RAF. But having seen it and knowing more about the violence it implied, I was somehow prejudiced against Jorg, the pardoned terrorist, from the very beginning and I couldn't help thinking in the end, when he told them all he was terminally ill that this served him right.
In the history of humanity there have been so many victims among innocent people that I cannot help but wonder: isn't there a way to bring change, to have a revolution and change a bad situation through diplomacy, without having to kill people? Are these victims collateral damage and aren't they as important as the ones for whose good the ones implied in revolutions fight for? What would differentiate them? Are the people implied in revolutions fighting for common good or only for an ideal (in which situation, if you cannot reach an ideal without killing people, shouldn't you rather be considered a part of a more largely defined "homo homini lupus" group)?
I liked the subject of this book, but I thought it was not well-written enough as to express strongly the dilemmas that the author wanted to express. His rhetorical questions are not deduced easily and his story is a bit unfocused. I would have insisted more on the inner development of the characters after their mate's imprisonment.