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The Return, a novel by Bernhard Schlink, weaves together two quests for truth: one concerns an unfinished novel which fascinated the narrator when he was a child; the other concerns the first meeting of his parents, his birth, and then, the disappearance of his father at the end of the last war. Based on this complex narrative, I pose some questions about the process which motivates a person to look for “the truth” of an event which may preoccupy or concern him/her directly, as well as the work of grieving and then, of reinvesting oneself in the life which follows.