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Bernhard Schlink. Liebesfluchten. Zurich. Diogenes. 2000. 308 pages. DM 39-90. ISBN 3-257-o6230-3.
AFTER ESTABLISHING HIMSELF as a prizewinning author of popular crime novels, Bernhard Schlink published the best-selling novel Der Vorleser (1995; see WLT 704, p. 951), which in the eyes of many elevated him to a higher level of literary achievement. His latest book, a collection of stories about love, indicates that Schlink will continue to set higher literary goals for himself, but without giving up the elements that made his previous writings commercially viable: the twisting plots and surprise endings of the crime genre and the undemanding, straightforward style that makes him such an easy read.
As the book's title announces, these stories concern the "flights of love." Whether drawn by love's magnetic pull or fleeing its stifling clutches, the characters in these very credible and very conventional narratives are caught in the tangles of Eros, but also ensnared by the complexities of their social and historical situations. Organized around the amatory predicaments of everyday people, these stories treat themes that could easily devolve into kitsch. But, as he had done in Der Vorleser, Schlink avoids this tendency by placing his characters not only in interpersonal relationships, but also in relation to social reality and the political past.
The first story, "Das Madchen mit der Eidedise," features a young law student who becomes...