The Weekend, ***UNCORRECTED PROOF COPY***

Old friends and lovers reunite for a weekend in a secluded country house, after spending decades apart. But this is no ordinary reunion.

After twenty-four years, Jörg, a convicted murderer and terrorist, has been released from prison on a pardon. The announcement will send shockwaves through Germany. But first his friends - Baader-Meinhof sympathisers or those who clung to them - gather to celebrate Jörg's freedom.

As the weekend unfolds, old jealousies simmer, and unanswered questions surge to the fore. And into this mix steps Marko, a dangerously passionate young man, intent on disturbing Jörg's fragile peace.

In his most important book since The Reader, Schlink probes the shadowlands between guilt and redemption, present and past, experience and youth. In haunting prose he distils both the pain of the nation, and the abiding possibility of hope.

Bernhard Schlink was born in Germany is 1944. A professor of law at Humboldt University, Berlin and Cardozo Law School, New York, he is the author of the major international bestselling novel and movie The Reader, short story collection Flights of Love and several prize-winning crime novels. He lives in Berlin and New York.