"When we speak of guilt about the past, we are not thinking about individuals, or even organizations, but rather a guilt that infects the entire generation that lives through an era — and in a sense the era itself.
"Even after the era is past, it casts a long shadow over the present, infecting later generations with a sense of guilt, responsibility and self-questioning."
This is how University of Berlin law professor Bernhard Schlink — author of the bestselling 1995 novel "Der Vorleser" (published as "The Reader" in the United States in 1997) — opens his discussion of justice and atonement in his new nonfiction work, "Guilt About the Past." Published last month by the University of Queensland Press, it comprises six essays based on guest lectures he gave last year at Oxford University.