‘Hurry up,’ called Brigitte, ‘two minutes to go.’ Enough time to distribute the champagne glasses and pop the corks.
Now we’re standing on the balcony, Philipp and Eberhard let off the fireworks, from all the churches comes the ringing of bells, we clink glasses.
‘Happy New Year.’
Bernhard Schlink
Bernhard Schlink is the author of the internationally bestselling novel The Reader; a collection of short stories, Flights of Love; and three other crime novels, The Gordian Knot, Self Deception, and Self Slaughter, which are currently being translated into English. He is a visiting professor at the Benjamin Cardozo School of Law, Yeshiva University, in New York. He lives in Bonn and Berlin.
Walter Popp
Walter Popp was born in Nuremberg and studied law at the University of Erlangen. He started a law practice in Mannheim before moving to France in 1983. He now lives in a Provençal village with his teenage daughter and works as a translator.
