Flights of Love: Stories

Bernhard Schlink brings to these seven superbly crafted stories the same sleek concision and moral acuity that made The Reader an international bestseller.

His characters–men with importunate appetites and unfortunate habits of deception–are uneasily suspended between the desire for love and the impulse toward flight.

A young boy’s fascination with an eerily erotic painting gradually leads him into the labyrinth of his family’s secrets. The friendship between a West Berliner and an idealisti...