BookCourt
163 Court St. between Dean & Pacific Sts.
Tuesday, September 27, free, 7:00
718-875-3677
www.bookcourt.org
German writer Bernhard Schlink, whose 1995 novel, The Reader, was turned into a 2008 film directed by Stephen Daldry and starring Ralph Fiennes and Kate Winslet, will be at BookCourt in Brooklyn on September 27 for a reading and signing of the paperback edition of his latest book, The Weekend (Vintage International, September 27, 2011, $15). A different kind of Big Chill, the novel is set in a rural estate where a group of old friends have gathered to celebrate the early release of Jörg, who has spent more than two decades in prison for having committed murder related to the group’s revolutionary terrorist activities. But everyone is much older now and has gone their separate ways, leading to crises of conscience, reevaluating past relationships, dealing with suicide, and reexamining their lives individually and as a whole, with each chapter seen through a different character’s eyes. “Henner didn’t know what to make of the weekend they were about to spend together, and what he should expect from it: from meeting Jörg again, along with Christiane and his other old friends,” Schlink writes at the beginning of the second chapter. “When Christiane’s call had come, he had said yes right away. Because he had heard a plea in her voice? Because a friendship formed in youth can claim a lifelong loyalty? Out of curiosity?”