Michael Berg, a sick 15-year-old, collapses on the street and an older woman cleans him up and walks him home.

Michael secretly watches Hanna Schmitz change clothes through a cracked door; she catches him and he flees in shame.

Michael helps Hanna carry heavy coal to her apartment, takes a bath at her insistence, and they have sex for the first time.

Hanna asks Michael to read aloud to her before sex, establishing the reading ritual that comes to define their entire relationship.

Michael and Hanna take a four-day bike trip together, registering at inns as mother and son.

Michael leaves his own birthday swimming-pool party early to visit Hanna, who turns out to be in a bad mood.

Michael spots Hanna at the public swimming pool; the next day he discovers she has moved out and vanished without a word.

Michael, now a law student, recognizes Hanna Schmitz sitting among the defendants at a Nazi war crimes trial.

The court hears that Hanna and four other female guards knowingly selected sixty women per month to be sent to the gas chambers at Auschwitz.

The daughter who survived the church fire testifies that Hanna chose young, weak prisoners to read to her each night before sending them to Auschwitz.

Walking alone in the woods during a trial recess, Michael suddenly understands that Hanna cannot read or write.

Michael chooses not to reveal Hanna's illiteracy to the court; she receives a life sentence while the other defendants receive shorter terms.

After separating from his wife, Michael records himself reading novels and poetry aloud and sends the tapes to Hanna in prison.

Michael visits Hanna in jail shortly before her scheduled parole; she says only the dead can truly understand her actions.

Hanna dies by suicide the morning of her scheduled release from prison.

The Reader follows Michael Berg, a 15-year-old West German boy who begins a secret affair with Hanna Schmitz, a 36-year-old tram conductor who insists he read aloud to her before their encounters. Their passionate but unequal relationship ends abruptly when Hanna vanishes without explanation, leaving Michael emotionally stunted for years. When Michael later attends a Nazi war crimes trial as a law student, he is stunned to find Hanna among the defendants, charged with selecting prisoners for the gas chambers and locking women in a burning church. A key revelation during the trial—that Hanna cannot read or write—explains her mysterious behavior, but Michael chooses not to disclose her illiteracy to the court, and she receives a life sentence. After his marriage fails, Michael sends Hanna audio recordings of himself reading books, their only form of contact across eighteen years. On the morning of her scheduled release from prison, Hanna dies by suicide, leaving Michael to carry her money to a Holocaust survivor and to eventually write down their story.

The central story of Michael and Hanna, from first meeting to final goodbye.

Michael's mother insists he bring flowers and visit the woman who helped him, setting events in motion.

Michael visits Hanna's apartment building to deliver the flowers and watches her iron her underwear in the kitchen.

Michael asks Hanna her first name; she tells him she is Hanna and mentions she has a 17-year-old son.

Michael begins a new school year in a co-ed class and meets Sophie, a girl who interests him romantically.

On the bike trip, Hanna strikes Michael across the face with a belt after waking to find him gone and believing he abandoned her.

Michael steals a silk nightgown from a department store as a gift for Hanna, narrowly escaping the store detective.

Michael invites Hanna to his empty family home and reads her passages from the philosophers Kant and Hegel.

After Hanna vanishes, Michael suffers intense hidden lovesickness; his brother notices he calls out her name in his sleep.

Michael and Sophie briefly become intimate, but she cries because she senses he does not truly care for her.

Michael attends the trial every single day while his seminar classmates only come once a week.

Hanna confesses to writing the SS report during the trial rather than allow a handwriting expert to be summoned.

Michael hitchhikes to the Natzweiler-Struthof concentration camp, trying to comprehend the reality of Nazi atrocities firsthand.

Michael visits his father to discuss whether to disclose Hanna's illiteracy; his father says adults must be free to choose their own path.

Michael attends his seminar professor's funeral; a fellow mourner asks directly whether something happened between Michael and Hanna at the trial.

Michael travels to New York City to deliver Hanna's savings to the daughter who survived the church fire; she refuses to accept the money.

While the central love affair between Michael and Hanna drives the novel, a web of secondary events gives the story its texture and depth. In the early chapters, Michael's mother sets fate in motion by sending him to thank Hanna, and the small domestic details of Hanna's apartment—her ironing, her coal, her uniform—establish her working-class world and its contrast with Michael's academic family. Their relationship is marked by Hanna's outbursts and Michael's adolescent attempts to be adult, including stealing gifts for her and lying to his parents about their time together. When Hanna disappears, Michael's grief haunts him invisibly, souring his capacity for closeness with anyone else, including a brief and sad encounter with his classmate Sophie. At the trial, secondary details prove decisive: Michael's daily attendance, Hanna's doomed courtroom strategy, her confession about the SS report, and a visit to a concentration camp all shape his deepening moral crisis. The aftermath of the trial sends Michael through marriage, divorce, and a career as a legal historian, until a chance conversation at a professor's funeral and a final trip to New York complete the story's emotional arc.

The smaller moments and supporting details that fill out the full story.

Michael takes Hanna to a theater performance of the play Intrigues and Love in a nearby town.

Michael surprises Hanna by boarding her early-morning streetcar, but she does not acknowledge him and the encounter ends in a fight.

Michael and Sophie take shelter from a rainstorm under a garden shed; she asks why he always arrives late and leaves early.

Michael tracks down Hanna's building owner and the streetcar company to confirm she has truly moved out and quit her job.

The court establishes that Hanna voluntarily left a promotion at the Siemens factory to join the SS as a concentration-camp guard.

Hanna's blunt, voluntary admissions about the prisoner selection process make her appear to be the ringleader, allowing the other defendants to shift blame onto her.

Hanna challenges the judge directly, asking twice what he himself would have done in her position; his answer is hollow and evasive.

Before the verdict, the courtroom crowd shouts insults at Hanna because her outfit resembles an SS uniform, turning the proceedings into a spectacle.

Michael visits the presiding judge and makes only small talk about career paths, saying nothing about Hanna's illiteracy.

Michael marries Gertrud after meeting her at a ski lodge, but never tells her about his past relationship with Hanna.

Michael becomes a legal historian rather than a practicing lawyer or judge, a career shaped directly by witnessing Hanna's trial.

Hanna's first handwritten note arrives from prison, revealing she has taught herself to read and write by following along with Michael's tapes.

The prison warden writes to Michael asking him to help Hanna find an apartment and job before her upcoming release.

Michael speaks with Hanna by phone the evening before her release; her voice sounds young and she teases him for over-planning.

The daughter who survived the church fire tells Michael that his relationship with Hanna traumatized him; Michael refuses to accept the framing.

The Reader is built on a series of turning points in which characters must choose between truth and self-protection, and on revelations that reframe everything that came before. Michael's relationship with Hanna begins to crack when his Easter surprise on her streetcar backfires and when his classmate Sophie begins to notice the gaps in his story. After Hanna's disappearance, Michael's active search to confirm she is truly gone marks the moment his childhood ends in confusion rather than closure. At the trial, crucial turning points accumulate: Hanna's voluntary and damaging admissions on the stand, her pointed challenges to the judge, and her humiliation before a shouting crowd all reveal the proceedings as theater rather than justice. Michael's silence about her illiteracy—cemented in a hollow meeting with the judge—becomes the defining moral failure of his life. In the aftermath, his career choice, his failed marriage, and the arrival of Hanna's first handwritten note each mark a new stage in a relationship that refuses to end. The novel closes with a Holocaust survivor naming the truth Michael will not speak for himself: that he was a victim too.