The Blindness of the Heart Reading Guide & Discussion Questions

Book Club Discussion Questions

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For supplemental discussion material see our Beyond the Book article, Bautzen, Germany and our BookBrowse Review of The Blindness of the Heart.

Please be aware that this discussion guide will contain spoilers!

1. Why do you think the book begins with Peter's mother leaving him at the train station?  How does the opening scene affect how we read the rest of the story?
   
2. To what do you attribute Helene's mother's withdrawal?  Is it simply grief from losing her sons in childbirth, or is there another loss she has suffered?
   
3. We are told early on that Helene's mother is Jewish.  How does her Jewishness affect her life and Helene and Martha's lives in their small town of Bautzen?  What can you glean about what Jewish life must have been like in these small German towns around WWI?  Is there hostility already apparent? In what ways?
   

Unless otherwise stated, this discussion guide is reprinted with the permission of Grove Press. Any page references refer to a USA edition of the book, usually the trade paperback version, and may vary in other editions.