七個沒有盡頭的夏日，浮沉人生的荒謬劇一一上演。
七個虛實難分的謊言，擁抱著一個個快要壞掉的靈魂。
旺季後 他們就像兩個迷路的孩子，終於遇見彼此。他們愛得熱烈，就像從來沒愛過。但他不敢承認，自己偶爾會想念那些孤獨的日子……
巴登巴登之夜 為了配合女友捏造出來的瘋狂劇碼，他不惜撒謊。如果撒謊可以讓情況變好，那毀掉自己的形象也無所謂嗎？
森林小屋 他要打造一個如夢似幻的騙局，把他的妻女緊鎖在這片森林，與世隔絕，他相信他們將幸福美滿，直到永遠……
夜晚的陌生人 陌生人對他說了一段不可思議的際遇，他不曉得陌生人有沒有騙他，但他為什麼就是願意相信他？
最後的夏日 他快要死了，這會是他人生中最後一個夏天。他沒告訴任何人，他把毒藥藏在廚櫃裡，預備要喝下去。
魯根島上的巴哈 一場旅行能消解父親與兒子長久以來的誤會嗎？他們靜默無語，他們聽著巴哈的歌，默默地流下眼淚……
南方之旅 為了逃避自己的懦弱，她改編了事實，她騙了他，騙了自己，騙了她整個漫長的人生……如今坦承，還來得及嗎？
From Bernhard Schlink, the internationally best-selling author of The Reader, come seven provocative and masterfully calibrated stories. A keen dissection of the ways in which we play with truth and less-than-truth in our lives. Summer Lies brims with the delusions, the passions, the outbursts, and the sometimes irrational justifications people make within a melange of beautifully rendered relationships. In ” After the Season, ” a man falls quickly in love with a woman he meets on the beach but wrestles with his incongruous feelings of betrayal after he learns she’s rich. In “ Johann Sebastian Bach on Ruegen, ” a son tries to put his resentment toward his emotionally distant father behind him by proposing a trip to a Back festival but soon realizes, during his efforts to reconnect, that it wasn’t his father who was the distant one. A philandering playwright is accused to infidelity by his wife in “ The Night in Baden-Baden, ” but he sees her accusations as nothing more than a means to exculpate himself of his guilt as he carries on with his ways.
And in “ Stranger in the Night, ” an obliging professor becomes an accomplice — not entirely unwittingly — to the temporary escape of a charismatic fugitive on a delayed flight from New York to Frankfurt.
The truth, as once character puts it, is “ passionate, beautiful sometimes, and sometimes hideous, it can make you happy and it can torture you, and it always sets you free. ” Tantalizingly, so is the act of telling a lie—to others and to ourselves.
★本書中譯版《夏日謊言》由皇冠出版。
作者簡介
徐林克 Bernhard Schlink
一九四四年生於德國。出身法律世家的徐林克從小就喜愛文學，但卻依從了家人的期待而去鑽研法律，並成為柏林大學的法律教授，也擔任法官，在德國法學界享有盛名。而在法律界的豐富經歷，讓徐林克對犯罪和人性都有著比一般人更深刻的精闢洞察。
一九八七年他與瓦特．波普合著犯罪小說處女作《我遺落的那一半》，即榮獲德國「偵探檔案文學獎」、《世界報》文學獎，並被改編拍成電影。
徐林克在一九九五年出版的《我願意為妳朗讀》，則將他推上了創作生涯的高峰。由於該書的時空背景是徐林克自己的親身經歷，使得這本書格外地撼動人心，一出版即轟動全歐洲，進軍美國也大獲成功，不但是第一本高踞紐約時報暢銷排行榜冠軍的德國小說，也成為全美最具影響力的「歐普拉秀」推薦選書有史以來第一本入選的外國小說！該書目前已被翻譯成三十七種語言，二○○四年由德國ZDF電視台舉辦的「百大最愛德語好書」票選活動中，《我願意為妳朗讀》更榮獲當代德語文學作品第二名！二○○九年《我願意為妳朗讀》改編拍成電影「為愛朗讀」，由凱特．溫斯蕾飾演女主角韓娜，並一舉囊括奧斯卡金像獎、英國電影學院獎兩大影后殊榮。
繼《我願意為妳朗讀》後，徐林克發表了短篇小說集《愛之逃》，其中的〈外遇〉也被改編拍成電影「外慾殺機」。而睽違十一年後再度發表的長篇小說《歸鄉》，則同樣席捲國際文壇，也更加奠定其無可撼動的大師地位。二○○八年再推出《週末》，同樣廣受歡迎！
徐林克現定居柏林與紐約。
Bernhard Schlink is the author of the internationally best-selling novel The Reader. He is a former judge and teaches public law and legal philosophy at Humboldt University in Berlin and at the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law in New York City.
