Get our Best Book Club Books of 2025 eBook!

Summary and Reviews of Flights of Love by Bernhard Schlink

Flights of Love by Bernhard Schlink

Flights of Love

Stories

by Bernhard Schlink
  • Critics' Consensus (10):
  • Readers' Rating (3):
  • First Published:
  • Oct 1, 2001, 320 pages
  • Paperback:
  • Nov 2002, 320 pages
  • Rate this book

About This Book

Book Summary

A collection of stories that weave themselves around the idea of love---love to seek and love to flee; love as desire, as guilt, as confusion or self-betrayal; love as habit, as affair, and as life-changing rebellion.

From the internationally best-selling author of The Reader, here is a collection of stories that weave themselves around the idea of love---love to seek and love to flee; love as desire, as guilt, as confusion or self-betrayal; love as habit, as affair, and as life-changing rebellion.

As his myriad fans know from The Reader, Bernhard Schlink's power as a storyteller resides in his cool compassion and in the intelligence that he wields like a laser to penetrate human motives and human behavior. Here his subject is not history but the heart itself, and with the forensic delicacy of a master he lays bare the essence of our feelings.

Already an enormous success in the author's native Germany, Flights of Love is certain to be celebrated, discussed, read and re-read.


(Translated by John E. Woods).

Membership Advantages
  • Reviews
  • "Beyond the Book" articles
  • Free books to read and review (US only)
  • Find books by time period, setting & theme
  • Read-alike suggestions by book and author
  • Book club discussions
  • and much more!
  • Just $0 for 0 months or $20 for 3 months.
  • More about membership!

Reviews

Media Reviews

Washington Post Book World
Masterfully composed and truly unforgettable. He has a rare gift for giving his writing a casual, unpretentious atmosphere.

Der Spiegel
If there is a renaissance in the art of storytelling, this is it.

Focus (Germany)
Schlink is a brilliant storyteller who steers events to their end with a jurist's clarity and measured mind. These pieces are as perfect as small plays.

Saarbruecker Zeitung
Seven well-crafted stories filled with existential suspense and as timeless as they are completely of-the-moment . . . pieces of prose that carry the power of a force of nature.

Süddeutsche Zeitung
In Flights of Love Bernhard Schlink as a storyteller proves himself to be our archaeologist of emotions. He digs until he locates the sore point of our present-day world. It is a gripping, bold performance.

Booklist - Donna Seaman
Each (of the 7 stories) is about love under pressure, and each is constructed as cleverly as a maze. A practicing judge, Schlink is as fascinated by questions of justice as he is by the convolutions of love, and consequently his stories are laced with secrets, lies, betrayals, attempts at revenge, and bittersweet reconciliation.

Library Journal
Schlink's stories are indeed flights of love, portraying twists and turns to the normal course of events that then lift people out of their lives. And like the author's celebrated The Reader, several of these works ache with the sorrows of Germany's tumultuous 20th Century.

Publishers Weekly
The clarity of Schlink's vision and the calm eloquence with which it's expressed make these tales classics of their genre.

School Library Journal - -Sheila Shoup
Schlink has produced an exquisite book that will ground the starry-eyed and lift the sullen.

Kirkus Reviews
Touching, involving short fiction from a writer who eschews bold imagery and stylistic fireworks-and slowly, doggedly gets into your head and under your skin.

Membership Advantages
  • Reviews
  • "Beyond the Book" articles
  • Free books to read and review (US only)
  • Find books by time period, setting & theme
  • Read-alike suggestions by book and author
  • Book club discussions
  • and much more!
  • Just $0 for 0 months or $20 for 3 months.
  • More about membership!

Read-Alikes

Read-Alikes Full readalike results are for members only

If you liked Flights of Love, try these:

  • My Mistress's Sparrow Is Dead jacket

    My Mistress's Sparrow Is Dead

    by Jeffrey Eugenides

    Published 2009

    About this book

    More by this author

    "Read these love stories in the safety of your single bed. Let everybody else suffer."— Jeffrey Eugenides, from the introduction to My Mistress's Sparrow Is Dead.

  • The Visible World jacket

    The Visible World

    by Mark Slouka

    Published 2008

    About this book

    More by this author

    The Visible World is an evocative, powerfully romantic novel about a son's attempt to understand his mother's past, a search that leads him to a tragic love affair and the heroic story of the assassination of a high-ranking Nazi by the Czech resistance.

We have 7 read-alikes for Flights of Love, but non-members are limited to two results. To see the complete list of this book's read-alikes, you need to be a member.
More books by Bernhard Schlink
Search read-alikes
How we choose read-alikes
Membership Advantages
  • Reviews
  • "Beyond the Book" articles
  • Free books to read and review (US only)
  • Find books by time period, setting & theme
  • Read-alike suggestions by book and author
  • Book club discussions
  • and much more!
  • Just $0 for 0 months or $20 for 3 months.
  • More about membership!

BookBrowse Book Club

Book Jacket
Lessons in Chemistry
by Bonnie Garmus
Praised by Parade and The New York Times Book Review, this debut features a 1960s scientist turned TV cooking star.

Members Recommend

  • Book Jacket

    The Seven O'Clock Club
    by Amelia Ireland

    Four strangers join an experimental treatment to heal broken hearts in Amelia Ireland's heartfelt debut novel.

  • Book Jacket

    The Fairbanks Four
    by Brian Patrick O’Donoghue

    One murder, four guilty convictions, and a community determined to find justice.

  • Book Jacket

    Ginseng Roots
    by Craig Thompson

    A new graphic memoir from the author of Blankets and Habibi about class, childhood labor, and Wisconsin’s ginseng industry.

  • Book Jacket

    Serial Killer Games
    by Kate Posey

    A morbidly funny and emotionally resonant novel about the ways life—and love—can sneak up on us (no matter how much pepper spray we carry).

  • Book Jacket

    One Death at a Time
    by Abbi Waxman

    A cranky ex-actress and her Gen Z sobriety sponsor team up to solve a murder that could send her back to prison in this dazzling mystery.

Who Said...

We've heard that a million monkeys at a million keyboards could produce the complete works of Shakespeare...

Click Here to find out who said this, as well as discovering other famous literary quotes!

Wordplay

Solve this clue:

A C on H S

and be entered to win..