Flights of Love
Stories
By Bernhard Schlink
(Vintage, Paperback, 9780375725555, 320pp.)
Publication Date: November 12, 2002
Categories: Short Stories (single author)
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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 idealistic young couple from the East founders amid the prosperity and revelations that follow the collapse of communism. An acrobatic philanderer (one wife and two mistresses, all apparently quite happy) begins to crack under the weight of his abundance. By turns brooding and comic, and filled with the suspense that comes from the inexorable unfolding of character, Flights of Love is nothing less than masterful
Bernhard Schlink is the author of the internationally best selling novel The Reader and of four crime novels, The Gordian Knot, Self Deception, Self-Administered Justice, and Self Slaughter, which are currently being translated into English. He is a professor at the Benjamin Cardozo School of Law, Yeshiva University, in New York.
“Intimate, smart, powerful. . . . As memorable as The Reader. . . . Dazzling.” –The Washington Post
“Powerful. . . .Elegantly constructed. . . . Schlink is possessed with a coolly direct manner of interrogating the confused motives of the human heart.” –The New York Times Book Review
“[An] outstanding collection.” –The Wall Street Journal
“Riveting. . . . Mature and disturbing.” –Los Angeles Times
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The Unnamed Joshua Ferris Reagan Arthur Books |
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Committed Elizabeth Gilbert Viking Adult |
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The Crossing Places Elly Griffiths Houghton Mifflin Harcourt |
