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Homecoming

3.12 of 5 stars 3.12 · rating details · 960 ratings · 167 reviews

Growing up with his mother in Germany, Peter Debauer knows little about his father, an apparent victim of the Second World War. But when he stumbles upon a few pages from a long-lost novel, Peter embarks on a quest that leads him across Europe to the United States, chasing fragments of a story within a story and a master of disguises who may or may not exist. Homecoming is...more

Hardcover, 272 pages

Published January 8th 2008 by Pantheon Books (first published 2006)

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Jan 14, 2009 Michael rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Perhaps more daring in conception but less well realized in execution than The Reader, Schlink's Homecoming uses Homer's Odyssey (in the sense of its being of the class of nostoi) as a metaphor for "homecoming." As is so often the case, this is an example of demanding too much of a metaphor. The basic idea is sound and interesting, but Schlink has relied too much on references to the details of the Odyssey appearing in strange ways throughout the narrative, which has the dual effects of strainin...more

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Feb 04, 2012 Kristine Morris rated it 1 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Bernhard Schlink should have written an essay or article on the theory of law, justice and the philosophy of good and evil and left it at that. Instead he tried carve a story about a boy’s search for an absent father into this lecture. I think there are some interesting concepts explored in the book, and it had the potential to be another “The Reader”- his first novel, but it needed to be revised (more than once) and a heavy hand of editing would have helped too.
I like books that have a mytholo...more Bernhard Schlink should have written an essay or article on the theory of law, justice and the philosophy of good and evil and left it at that. Instead he tried carve a story about a boy’s search for an absent father into this lecture. I think there are some interesting concepts explored in the book, and it had the potential to be another “The Reader”- his first novel, but it needed to be revised (more than once) and a heavy hand of editing would have helped too.
I like books that have a mythological theme throughout, but while Schlink uses the Odyssey and the genre of “homecoming” literature, he isn’t able to thread it into the fabric of the story very successfully. In fact it’s overused. Instead you read point of view newspaper articles of the mystery character he is researching and in Part 5 you get to attend actual lectures and seminars and hear him pontificate.
When Schlink actually remembered that he was writing a novel, you get a glimpse of what he’s capable. The opening of the book where he describes his summer visits to his grandparents is beautifully done. He also makes use of déjà-vous both conceptually and practically and it’s well done (except he tries to reuse it at the end again and makes a mash of it). The loveless relationship he has with his mother is also done well and faithfully throughout the entire novel.
The ending (Part 5) is a huge disappointment. The bizarre climatic event was actually annoying (so much so that I admit to skimming through a few pages – and I NEVER do that). Thinking about it, Schlink needed something to break his desire to continue seeking his father. The event is what allows him to turn off the TV midway through watching his father being interviewed on National TV. He irrevocably shuts his father from his life in the same manner his father did to him as a young boy.
A book is supposed to give you something. Sometimes it’s just the pure pleasure of an author’s style of writing, sometimes it’s the pure genius creativity of the story. It could be that you are learning something new….like travelling in the shoes of someone different and gaining their perspective on life, or you could learn about the country and culture in which the book takes place. Sometimes you can relate to the author (they are in similar circumstances as you) or they are describing places and events you’ve been. This novel didn’t give me anything other than the enjoyment of reading Part 1 (which I will always remember as a short story), and perhaps the knowledge that the philosophy of law, good, evil and justice are topics I am not genuinely interested in.
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Nov 07, 2011 Vishy rated it 4 of 5 stars

I discovered ‘Homecoming’ by Bernhard Schlink a few years back during one of my random browsing sessions at the bookstore. Schlink was more famous for his book ‘The Reader’ which was made into a movie of the same name and which won Kate Winslet her first Oscar. ‘Homecoming’ appealed to me because of its bookish cover and the plot. I thought I will read it for German Literature Month. It was gripping from the first page to the last. I finished reading it today. Here is what I think.

What I think

‘H...more

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Apr 13, 2011 Diane A Brown rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Homecoming is usually a memorable and happy experience however this journey is one filled with so many twist and turns I found myself lost on several occasions.

The story starts out simple enough. Young Peter travels across the German / Swiss boarder to visit his grandparents during the summer. The descriptions here are well done and easy to visualize. The stories were interesting.

Peter becomes infatuated with a story his grandparents are editing and is frustrated when he can’t find the rest of t...more

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Jul 02, 2009 Grady rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

'We make our own truths and lies....Truths are often lies and lies truths...'

Bernhard Schlink stunned the reading public with his brilliant novel 1999 THE READER and once again with HOMECOMING he proves he is one of our most important authors today. Written in German and translated by Michael Henry Heim, HOMECOMING addresses, as did THE READER, the prolonged impact of the WW II fall of Germany on the lives of those who survived it. Not only is this a gripping story of a deserted son's search for...more 'We make our own truths and lies....Truths are often lies and lies truths...'

Bernhard Schlink stunned the reading public with his brilliant novel 1999 THE READER and once again with HOMECOMING he proves he is one of our most important authors today. Written in German and translated by Michael Henry Heim, HOMECOMING addresses, as did THE READER, the prolonged impact of the WW II fall of Germany on the lives of those who survived it. Not only is this a gripping story of a deserted son's search for his mysterious father, it is also a treatise reflecting on the horrors of evil and challenges the responsibility of those who perpetrated it and those who 'allowed' or were victims of its perpetration. There is much profound philosophy in these pages, enough to make the reader stop, think, turn to other resources for references, and become transported by the mind of a truly gifted writer.

Peter DeBauer was raised by his distant mother who refused to inform him about his father, a mysterious man who apparently wrote novels edited and published by is own parents (Peter's paternal grandparents with whom he has an intense bond) yet 'disappeared' form his life to become involved in surviving the war by moving to Switzerland and eventually to America where he became established as a political science professor at Columbia University where, as John De Bauer, he became a highly regarded professor and mind manipulator. The story concerns Peter's quest for finding his father, a journey that places him in locations throughout Europe, seeking bits and fragments of information from anyone even slightly connected with the information he has about his father, finding solace and love from various women, and eventually results in his compulsive trip to New York to investigate the infamous John De Bauer, only to be caught up in a fascinating retreat in the frozen tundra of Upstate New York, learning the truth about his shadowy father. 'Sometimes I feel a longing for the Odysseus who learned the tricks and lies of the confidence man..., set out restless in the world, sought adventure and came out on top, won over my mother with his charm, and made up novels with great gusto and theories with playful levity. But I know it is not Johann Debauer or John De Baur I long for; it is the image I have made of my father and hung in my heart.'

The magic of reading Schlink's books is the discovery of a mixture of brilliant story development with indelibly rich characters and the sharing of philosophizing about death, murder, suicide, guilt, and history's influence on who we will become. 'At what degree of cold, hunger, pressure, or fear does the layer of civilization start to peel away?' Yes, other writers are dealing with the scars left on the German mind living in the aftermath of the atrocities of national guilt. But few do it so eloquently and with such brilliant skill as Bernhard Schlink. At novel's end, the reader is consumed with the desire to start the book all over again. Highly recommended. Grady Harp(less)

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Apr 11, 2009 Stephen rated it 3 of 5 stars

I am a big fan of Bernhard Schlink's "The Reader," even though it has now been Oprahfied. So I began "Homecoming" with high expectations. I was somewhat disappointed. "Homecoming," I believe, tries to do too much. It is a story of a lost father and the guilt and sense of mystery a young German feels as he tries to recuperate someone whose life was lived in the shadow of the Third Reich, but it is also organized around The Odyssey, attempting to play off that classic, and is, moreover, a meditati...more

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May 02, 2011 Heffalumpi rated it 1 of 5 stars

Shelves: did-not-finish

This book showed much promise from the blurb on the back cover. I had read his other book The Reader before it was made into a film and really enjoyed it so naturally I did not hesitate to give this book a go. A fair go I did give it, 159 pages to be exact, and it went nowhere, well, nowhere I wanted to continue to go!

The premise of the book was good in that a man who had spent most of his childhood with his grandparents during the summer months realises that the have been writing manuscripts an...more

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Mar 25, 2011 Alison rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: world

Fabulous! As much as I enjoyed his stories in Flights of Love, especially "The Circumcision", I absolutely loved this book. First, hats off to the translator. I am sure it's easier to translate a German language book into English, rather than, say, Russian to English, but this was done so well that the words just sang. A testament I'm sure to the author, but also to the translator, who has to pick the right English words to do the German justice. Fabulous.

Peter Debauer is a fabulous character. T...more

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May 01, 2009 Hannah Messler rated it 2 of 5 stars

So the criticism that the lady who gave me The Reader had of it was concerning this part where the main character goes skiing toward the end of the book and he skis in a teeshirt. And she was like "That just seemed over-the-top and melodramatic and idiotic to me, like [affects silly German accent:] 'Oh I am so German and desensitized I will just ski in the freezing cold in a teeshirt because I have no feelings after all that has befallen me,'" which, yeah, is pretty dumb, I guess, if you read it...more

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Apr 14, 2013 Debbie rated it 3 of 5 stars

Let me start of by saying this, may be a wonderful book but maybe just was not the perfect match for me. I've given it 3 stars based on my experience with it, not based on the author's talent.

There were a lot of philosophy references and existential thought comparisons. I have never been a philosophy student nor enjoyed the disputes and conversations of the whole existential thought movement, so with this in mind, it was a slightly difficult read for me. I enjoy a good story, simply. I do enjoy...more Let me start of by saying this, may be a wonderful book but maybe just was not the perfect match for me. I've given it 3 stars based on my experience with it, not based on the author's talent.

There were a lot of philosophy references and existential thought comparisons. I have never been a philosophy student nor enjoyed the disputes and conversations of the whole existential thought movement, so with this in mind, it was a slightly difficult read for me. I enjoy a good story, simply. I do enjoy complex introspective characters but I kind of felt as if this was something of a college read and I'd be required to write a paper on it when it was completed. That's not a bad thing, just not what usually I go for in a book I'm reading at my leisure.

Peter DeBauer grows up in Germany as the only child of a single mother who he is lead to believe is widowed. He visits his paternal grandparents during the summers of his childhood and has very fond memories. They are the grounding force in his life and the link, he feels to his father who died before he was born. His grandparents compose a book of German stories. They don't invite him to read them but give to him the first copies or unusable scraps of pages for him to use the reverse clean side due to the fact that good paper is hard to come by. Peter by accident starts to collect the pages and attempt to put together the stories. One story about a soldier named Karl coming home from war intrigues him when he discovers peculiarly that it has a striking almost uncanny comparison to the Odysseus story. Peter develops a slight obsession with this theory and it's true author. There is a lot of metaphor involving the study of the Odysseus journey home, the character Karl's journey home, the true author of the Karl story and other discovered writings journey, and Peter's journey through all of this eventually arriving in the end "home". Thus the title, "Homecoming". The Odysseus poem is dissected in so many ways, because I'm not a scholar, it was a bit tiring. Poor Peter's world is torn upside down by discoveries of his mother, his father and a self that he learns about going through the paces of his investigation.

It's basically about the journey to whatever or whomever "home" is for all of the characters involved. It was a combination of Ok/Good for me. It did get a bit weird for me toward the end when I felt I was watching an episode of the series Lost but considering the character we meet and his strange mad scientist/psychopathic mentality, it's to be expected. There is also a lot of discussion in regards to what is really good and what is really evil. If you read the book, you'll see. I'm glad Peter finally said enough is enough and left the shenanigans behind. That is how I felt at the end of the book, enough is enough. I'm tired of ripping to shreds these philosophical questions and comparisons. Let's give Peter a nice rest of his life and end.

If you love philosophy and existentialism you will adore this book. To those people, I recommend the book whole heartedly. There's mystery, nostalgia, melancholy, a kind of love, obsession, discovery, discussion, philosophy, and existentialism. I've tried to be brief and not give spoilers away for those who will give it a try.It wasn't really what I expected.(less)

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Jan 14, 2010 Chrissy Owens rated it 5 of 5 stars Recommends it for: everyone

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here.

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Nov 26, 2008 Mara rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: books-about-books, germany, historical-fiction, wwii

The first two-thirds of this book were pretty good. We start with young Peter describing his childhood visits to his grandparents in Switzerland. His grandparents edit a series of light novels, one of which is the story of Carl, a German soldier, and his struggle to return home from the Russian front after WWII. Unfortunately, Peter has only the manuscript of the book, and the ending is missing. What happens when Carl returns home and finds his wife with another man and two small daughters? Does...more

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Mar 02, 2009 Stephanie rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: found-in-translation

As befitting its title, the opening chapter of Homecoming is luminously nostalgic: the narrator recalls the train journeys he used to take by himself from post-war Germany to visit his grandparents in bucolic Switzerland.

But the comforting image of friendly train conductors and boat rides on a lake is swiftly dispensed with in the next chapter, in which the narrator recounts a harrowing series of truck rides. His single mother hadn't the fare for the train, and so cast her child upon the kindnes...more As befitting its title, the opening chapter of Homecoming is luminously nostalgic: the narrator recalls the train journeys he used to take by himself from post-war Germany to visit his grandparents in bucolic Switzerland.

But the comforting image of friendly train conductors and boat rides on a lake is swiftly dispensed with in the next chapter, in which the narrator recounts a harrowing series of truck rides. His single mother hadn't the fare for the train, and so cast her child upon the kindness of strangers in what seems a rather cavalier fashion.

An unrelenting focus on the darkness of reality is at the centre of epic, thought-provoking tale that follows. Schlink, a law professor who shot to international fame with his novel The Reader, is of the generation born in Germany during and after World War Two -- those who were not responsible for the Nazi atrocities, yet feel a sense of inherited guilt.

In his follow-up novel, translated by Michael Henry Heim, the narrator is Peter Debauer. As a boy, he was told by his German mother that his Swiss father died during the war. But he eventually winds out discovering a different truth when, on an annual visit to his Swiss grandparents, he comes across a section of the proof of a novel about a German soldier's postwar trek home.

He gets up to the part where the soldier makes it to his doorstep, only to be greeted with the sight of his wife standing there with a new child and a new man. The ending of the story is missing.

As an adult, Debauer begins a search both for the missing pages of the manuscript, which he by then has realised has more than passing parallels to Homer's epic poem The Idyssey, about the Greek hero who takes ten years to return home from the Trojan war.

His search leads him to a house where he meets a woman with whom he falls in love. Unfortunately, she is a modern-day incarnation of a soldier's wife -- in this case, the husband is an intrepid war journalist -- and thus Debauer himself takes part in one possible ending to the soldier's tale.

But his life, and that of his unknown father, is increasing intertwined with the story of the mysterious writer. As Debauer continues his investigations, his inroads into the mysterious author's psyche brush against the atrocities committed during the war, and forces him to confront preconceived notions of love, justice and morality.

It is a little disconcerting as the story steadily discards its ties to realism and follows a kind of metaphysical logic, with characters accepting bizarre coincidences and jumping to far-fetched by correct conclusions.

Like Odyseus battling giants and being lured by seductresses, the protagonist becomes less significant as a unique man than representive of an everyman, with actions taking on philosophical rather than personal significance.

Ultimately, what drives the book are not the characters but the ideas behind them about what drives human behaviour in general. Schillar engages the mind, if not the heart, of the individual, but by doing so reaches into the heart of man and the selfishness at its core.(less)

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Sep 13, 2012 Erin Quinney rated it 2 of 5 stars

A lecture/philosophical paper masquerading as a novel. The story, when the novel followed it, was interesting, but Schlink spent too much time lecturing to make it flow well. At one point, a character quoted someone he talked to ONE time. The quote went on for an entire page. Here's a sample:

"...and the willingness to turn the staid, mechanical world of the Enlightenment into an organic, creative world of excitement, to overcome untrammeled egoism and individualism by working together, to bridge...more

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Jan 29, 2013 Amalie rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: historical-fiction, books-from-about-europe

Schlink's novel 'The Reader' was excellent so I was excited to read this however, I found 'Homecoming' to be disappointed. Don't get me wrong, Schlink is a great writer and first 2/3 of the book are very well written but the latter portions of the book I found to be flawed and dull indeed. Losing a star for that.

'Homecoming' involves a young German man's search for the father who disappeared before his birth and his father's involvement in the war.

My problem is Schlink's work seems to too high o...more

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Feb 05, 2009 Bookmarks Magazine added it

Bernhard Schlink's The Reader (1995), an Oprah Book Club pick, explored a love affair and wartime guilt. Homecoming ruminates on guilt, justice, history, identity, and evil, and it uses the idea of homecoming to chart Peter's journey toward truth and love. Lies surface and questions about identity emerge as Peter follows clues to the mysterious author's

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Oct 08, 2009 Nick rated it 3 of 5 stars

I'm on a tear with Schlink novels. I love his simple clean prose (maybe it's the translation from German?). I appreciate his ambitious narrative conception, believeable characters, and organically intrinsic plotting, as well as a depth appreciation for the unique psychology of modern Germany. So I got sucked into this meditation on the classic mythology of Odysseus, the reinterpretation of themes in the telling of a German legal scholar and editor with a troubled past the reaches deeply into Naz...more

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Aug 16, 2009 Emily rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: borrowed

I liked this book. Or, I tried to like this book. No, I liked the bits of this book that didn't go over my head. I think I need a book club or something to discuss this book with.

I can't think of another book that I've read that deals with WWII from the German perspective (and how the German population suffered equal horrors at being bombed, lives shattered, generations warped, etc). I am unused to thinking of the Germans role in WWII in any way other than "villain" so it was weird to suddenly...more

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Dec 13, 2012 Judy rated it 3 of 5 stars

The novel operates on several levels, which include the boy and the man Peter's search for his father, several attempts at recreating the Odyssey, and meditations on good and evil, deception and truth, and the function of law in Western society. I found the writing well done, and though there may be minor quibbles the translation, it worked well overall. However, I found most of the characters shallow, perhaps because the author intended them to be so, and the various locations in which action t...more

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Feb 20, 2011 zespri rated it 3 of 5 stars

It took a while for me to figure out where Bernhard Schlink was going with this book. I loved The Reader, so thought I was in for another treat. Not so. I enjoyed the perspective of WW11 from a German insider, and the details of the fall of the Berlin Wall, there were some good quotes that I stopped and thought about but really the story did not grab me. I really did not enjoy the way the narrator kept finding meaning in pieces of an old novel he found and pieced together. It seemed too coincide...more

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Aug 29, 2012 Kokeshi rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: germany, favorites

I love Bernard Schlink's writing. His discussion of the human toll of war, even generations later, is like a balm for the open wound.

Schlink's The Reader was an amazing book and Homecoming is equally remarkable. As the title suggests homecoming is explored with the backdrop of Germany after WWII. This was a difficult time for Germany, but also for other nations whose troops were returning home after the devastation of war. This powerful novel comments on evil, justice, ethics, and morals before...more

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Aug 21, 2012 Brett rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Interesting story - using the Odyssey as a backdrop and homecoming template, young fatherless German comes across a series of clues pointing to the whereabouts of his long-vanished father. The tone of the book is very cold - cruel almost - how his mom and lover have almost no sympathy for his search and in many places attempt to obfuscate it. Enjoyable story but I, and probably most people liked The Reader better. I would love to read some meaningful modern German literature that had no links wi...more

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Oct 22, 2011 Wendy rated it 1 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: adult, didn-t-like, read-2011, fiction

The premise was interesting but disappointing in the end and I only finished Homecoming because it was for a book discussion group. The plot device of The Odyssey set in modern day got in the way of the story it was too obvious that Peter was making his life and the life of his father fit into the Odyssey, especially when Peter sets out to sleep with the types of women found The Odyssey. Many elements of the book seemed contrived or put into the book just to be in the book but really had no plot...more

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Jun 15, 2011 Annett rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Bernhard Schlinks Roman über mehr als nur eine Heimkehr zeichnet die Geschichte von Peter Debauer, der über die Geschichte einer Heimkehr, auf die er zufällig stösst, mehr über seine eigene Lebensgeschichte erfährt, indem er sich auf die Suche nach dem verlorenen gegangenen Schluss der Geschichte macht. Schlink versteht es, die Odyssee mit modernen Rechtstheorie zu verknöpfen und mit dem Hauptstrang des Romans zu verweben, ohne dass es langweilig oder anstrengend wird. Peters Beziehungn mit Barb...more

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Jan 19, 2009 Anne rated it 4 of 5 stars

I really liked this book and read it while visiting Europe last summer. 'Home Coming" is a search for identity, a quest for one's roots, a judgment about what might be true or not. The story is set in Germany, World War II, a time of loss and turmoil. The antagonist Peter Debauer, slowly learns that the stories his mother has told him about his father begin to diverge more and more from reality. Schlink examines the question of what coming home means today intertwined with the eternal question o...more

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Apr 23, 2011 Will rated it 2 of 5 stars

The whole thing feels rather forced. It begins with an unlikely obsession (fragments of a long-lost novel that the narrator, Peter DeBauer just has to find out more about) becomes a search for his father who was supposed to have been killed in the war. But there are way too many far-fetched clues - people who remember conversations and incidents from over 40 years earlier, for example.
The characters themselves don't come alive. They're more like pieces in a chess game, and often seem to be ther...more

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Feb 05, 2010 Kathy rated it 2 of 5 stars

Shelves: historical-fiction, hmmm

The story is perhaps well written, but I personally did not like Peter. He whines too much.

So the story pursues a few threads:

The Odyssey - the book itself, books Peter is reading based on the book, and Peter's own life of discovery.

justice - Peter's unfinished dissertation, his father's exploitation of the ideal.

homecomings - a partial book he read as a child - of a war hero returning to his wife, to find her with another man & 2 children... what happens when she opens the door? He pursues...more

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May 24, 2012 Lawrence rated it 3 of 5 stars

I have loved two other books by Schlink --- "The Reader" and "The Weekend". This book, however, is not his best by far. It contains self-conscious "puzzles" larded with theorizing. (I think that this is arid and that this type of contrivance should be left to Umberto Eco.) And all to show that our own personal homecomings are sometimes not easy given the vagaries of our lives and pasts, and even the lives and pasts of our mother and father.

(But I do like how Schlink makes passing references to t...more

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Feb 02, 2012 Jack Goodstein rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: novels

Like "The Reader," "Homecoming" deals with the lingering effects of fascism on Germans who participated in it and those who didn't. Deals with the idea of justifying evil behavior by saying that in exceptional circumstances we are all capable of evil.

Plays with themes of the son's search for the missing father and the idea of homecoming in relation to "The Odyssey," giving the book a mythic overtone--in a less experimental fashion than Joyce.

The character of De Bauer the ex-Nazi, now a deconstr...more

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May 20, 2012 Alain added it · review of another edition

Le narrateur qui n'a jamais connu son p?re est hant? par cette absence. Il va tout mettre en ?uvre pour le retrouver. Ce livre est ax? sur la qu?te d'identit? et sur le mythe du "retour" de ce p?re absent dans sa famille. Tout au long du r?cit, l'auteur fait r?f?rence ? l'Odyss?e qu'il utilise comme fil conducteur.

Le livre est construit en une succession de chapitres tr?s courts ce qui hache ?norm?ment le r?cit. D'autre part, le narrateur laisse souvent court ? ses pens?es mais ces digressions s...more

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About Bernhard Schlink

Bernhard Schlink is a German jurist and writer. He became a judge at the Constitutional Court of the federal state of North Rhine-Westphalia in 1988 and has been a professor of public law and the philosophy of law at Humboldt University, Berlin, Germany since January 2006.

His career as a writer began with several detective novels with a main character named Selb--a play on the German word for "sel...more

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“I did not know that children think the hard questions they ask are easy and thus expect easy answers to them, and that they are disappointed when they get cautious, complex answers.” — 6 people liked it

“The value of being brave, working hard, saving money keeping order depends on what it's for.” — 2 people liked it

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