What don’t you know about your partner?

BERNHARD SCHLINK is probably the world’s most famous living German novelist. His book “The Reader” (1995), a harrowing tale of a teenage boy’s affair with an older woman he later learns had been a concentration-camp guard, sold millions of copies and spawned a Hollywood adaptation with an Academy Award-winning performance from Kate Winslet. Now Mr Schlink has turned his attention to a different German catastrophe in the 20th century: its post-war cleavage and the shadow it continues to cast over the country, 34 years after its halves were reunified.