Gerhard Self is a lawyer turned private investigator who's brought in to find out the person behind a series of computer frauds at Rhineland Chemical Works. He is of an age where computers are still something of a mystery, but as the threat of a major chlorine leak increases Self must employ all his skill to find the perpetrator before a catastrophe occurs.
Beneath this plot Schlink works through the meaning of the Nazi past in a bourgeois democratic Germany. As a former Nazi prosecutor Gerhard Self is a wonderful literary character - a man struggling to find his place in the modern world, whose values are constantly challenged as he tries to make sense of the hand life has dealt him.
SELF PUNISHMENT is a detective story with real depth.
Gerhard Self is a lawyer turned private investigator who's brought in to find out the person behind a series of computer frauds at Rhineland Chemical Works. He is of an age where computers are still something of a mystery, but as the threat of a major chlorine leak increases Self must employ all his skill to find the perpetrator before a catastrophe occurs. Beneath this plot Schlink works through the meaning of the Nazi past in a bourgeois democratic Germany. As a former Nazi prosecutor Gerhard Self is a wonderful literary character - a man struggling to find his place in the modern world, whose values are constantly challenged as he tries to make sense of the hand life has dealt him. SELF PUNISHMENT is a detective story with real depth.
