Character Analysis
(Avoiding Spoilers)
Overview… a 36-year-old tram conductor living alone in 1958 Germany. One day, Hanna encounters a young boy vomiting in her apartment entryway and helps him return home. The boy’s name is Michael Berg and when he returns to thank her, Hanna initiates an affair that will impact him for the rest of his life.
Personality… moody, demanding, and hot-tempered. Hanna Schmitz isn’t an easy woman to please. She is occasionally verbally abusive and harsh towards Michael, but there is an allure to Hanna that makes him stick around.
Get to Know her in...
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The story of Michael Berg, a German lawyer who, as a teenager in the late 1950s, had an affair with an older woman, Hanna, who then disappeared only to resurface years later as one of the defendants in a war crimes trial stemming from her actions as a concentration camp guard late in the war. He alone realizes that Hanna is illiterate and may be concealing that fact at the expense of her freedom.
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When he falls ill on his way home from school, fifteen-year-old Michael Berg is rescued by Hanna, a woman twice his age. In time she becomes his lover—then she inexplicably disappears. When Michael next sees her, he is a young law student, and she is on trial for a hideous crime. As he watches her refuse to defend her innocence, Michael gradually realizes that Hanna may be guarding a secret she considers more shameful than murder.
