I have the feeling there's more than one way of looking at this book.

Post-war German generation coming to terms with their past, the Nazi crimes and their parents' guilt. Guilt, actually, is a recurring theme in the novel: Hanna is guilty of war crimes, Michael is guilty for disloyalty (plus he feels guilty for having loved Hanna and asks himself if that makes him a criminal as well).

 This book deals with the internal conflicts of Michael. He wants to help Hanna, but he was afraid that people know his relationship with her. She Convicted of a crime did not commit and he knows very well that she was innocent, but he did not defend her, even he did not visit her in prison out of fear that people knew his relationship with her. This is from my point is selfish. When I read this part of the book, jumped into my mind our beloved prophet and how he was proud of his wife Khadija and he was at the age of twenty and she was forty years old; this is the ethics of the prophets.

 I do not blame him on his behavior towards Hanna as I do not know the circumstances in which he lived at that time and other reason could be that I very much enjoyed his writing style and when you love something you do not see the bad side of it.

He is thoughtful about how Hanna affected him and how the sins of the people alive during the Nazi regime affect their children. There are several complex issues about identity, morality, and love in this novel.