![]() ![]() ![]() Olga by Bernhard Schlink, translated by Charlotte Collins, is published by Weidenfeld & Nicolson (£16.99). Olga is a poignant portrait of a woman out of step with her time, but too predictable to truly satisfy. The letters confirm Olga’s stoicism, her love of simple pleasures and contain two secrets that, frustratingly, Schlink has already given away. We guess the major reveals will come in the novel’s epistolary section. Some years later, he unearths the letters she sent to Herbert c/o Troms ø’s poste restante. Bernhard Schlink tells the story in lucid, serene language. Hannoversche Allgemeine Zeitung Olga is captivating. They remain friends until her death and Ferdinand is sole heir to her modest savings. Olga, who fights to be allowed to continue her education, seems like an alternative draft of the illiterate Hannah, whose lacking abilities led to her becoming a concentration camp guard during the Nazi era. She is the antithesis of Herbert, a woman defined by her love of education, unable to reach her potential because of her circumstances, and Schlink clearly wants us to admire her fidelity and calm resolve.īy the 1950s, Olga, now deaf, works as a seamstress for a family in south-west Germany and cares for their son, Ferdinand. ![]() Schlink deals swiftly with Germany’s colonial aspirations in south-west Africa, the Herero genocide and its role in two world wars, while Olga’s life is related in careful, unadorned prose. Olga is the antithesis of Herbert, a woman defined by her love of education Olga remains in Tilsit, finding solace with her neighbours’ son, Eik, whom she regales with Herbert’s adventures, until the second world war drives her west. The couple carry on regardless, spending more time apart than together, as Herbert indulges his wanderlust until his disappearance in the Arctic in 1913. ![]()
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