Bernhard Schlink
This book brings together nine dazzling stories that present a meticulous catalog of human attitudes and emotions. It starts with some pioneering scientists in the field of artificial intelligence in communist Germany, with the Stasi and regrets in the background, and other stories follow: that of the man who impassively attends the evolution of the romance of a young neighbor to whom he gave classes to as child, sensing that it cannot end well; that of the son who discovers the true face of his mother during a summer vacation on an island and thus also discovers himself; that of the music teacher who has a chance encounter with a woman with whom he was in love, from whom a secret emerges and perhaps the possibility of going back to the past; that of the stepfather who faces his lesbian daughter's desire to have offspring; that of the man who must assimilate the death of his brother, who has been almost a stranger to him.
