In the early 1970’s, Bernhard Schlink, then a young research assistant, traveled to see his parents in Hamburg. At this time the terrorist left-wing RAF group was growing more powerful in West Germany, and the subject quickly arose during dinner. Bernhard’s mother told him something that would affect him for the rest of his life:

“If you should ever become a terrorist, and are fleeing from the police and come knock on our door, we would let you stay for the night. But you would have to leave in the morning.”

Bernhard wondered to himself what a night like that would be like. What would you talk about with your sister, your parents, maybe the neighbors? His current novel The Weekend stems from these musings.

Wearing a suit jacket, jeans and Chucks, Bernhard read several chapters at BookCourt on Tuesday night. He started with the first, in which a woman picks up her brother as he’s released from over two decades in jail. She drives him into the country to spend the weekend with a few of their friends, who she’s carefully chosen not to upset him.

Several chapters later, the trip has heated up. As might be expected, not all attending are content to let the past lie. One of the guests asks Jörg point blank: What did your first murder feel like?

The Red Army Faction grew from student anti-Vietnam War protests in West Germany. It became a communist and anti-imperalist group fighting against what it saw as a fascist state. Altogether, it’s believed to have caused 34 deaths, including unintended targets. The violence reached its peak in what was called “German August” in 1977. Some of those jailed are now starting to be released.

In researching his book, Bernhard spoke with various people who had been involved in the RAF. These included some of his former students, who had turned into low-level terrorists, as well as jailed terrorists that a defense-lawyer put him in touch with. (One of these, incidentally, had written her master’s thesis on Bernhard’s last book, The Reader. Bernhard visited her in prison, initially too shy to ask her the harder questions about her experiences. “But then,” he said, “I did.”)

Former members of the disbanded RAF have also output a large amount of writing from their time in prison. When a psychotherapist studying the inner lives of terrorists brought together a group, they wrote a book about their experiences.

The common theme: “They all had to justify it,” Bernhard said. “When you spend 20 or 30 years first as a terrorist, and then in jail for it, you have to give it some meaning.” Many wrote that they’d started with good intentions and had then lost control. They were also angry about their treatment in prison—isolation chambers, interrogation techniques.

Bernhard spoke of the more psychological reasons people may have gotten involved in the first place. He said that many, including the group’s ringleaders, Andreas Baader and Ulrike Meinhof, were influenced by the generation before them. Their reasoning: “Our parents let things happen in the Third Reich. We can’t do that again.”

And then there was the underground factor: “Once you begin living underground, you lose touch with reality. We have other people—our friends and colleagues—to keep up grounded in reality. But when you’re in isolation, no one controls that.”

In a slightly similar vein, Bernhard found himself affected after spending so much time with his main character, Jörg: “When I write about people, I always somehow like them. Maybe it’s Stockholm Syndrome? I can’t get that close without liking them.” Bernhard paused. “And he’s not a likable character.”