The movie starts in 1995, Berlin, Where we see a guy who is making breakfast. His name is Michael, and he is a lawyer. Then, we see the woman who Michael spent the last night with. She asks him to meet again that evening, but he refuses because he was going to see his daughter who was studying abroad. He is divorced and lives alone. When the woman leaves, he starts to look outside through the window, he sees a train passing through there and it reminds him about his past life. Then, the movie goes to flashback. In 1958, when Michael was 15 years old. One day, he was returning from school and suddenly he started to feel suffocated. He gets out of the train and starts to vomit. Suddenly, a train conductor comes there and helps him, and cleans the vomit from there. Then, she takes him to his house.
The next day, the doctor confirms that he has scarlet fever, so he has to take rest for the next 3 months. After he gets better, he speaks to his mother about the woman who helped him to get back home that day when he was feeling sick. Then later, he goes to Hannah’s home with flowers to say thanks for helping him the other day. She asks him about his health and then asks him to wait outside, because she was getting ready for her work, and she tells him that they will chat on the way to her work. Then, she changes her dress to get ready for work, but Michael peeps at her from outside while she is changing her dress. But Hannah catches him looking at her while she is changing, so he immediately runs from there. After this incident he started to follow her secretly because he was afraid to talk to her. Finally, he goes to talk to her but she asks him to bring coal from the basement. He brings the coal from the basement. He was fully covered in dirt, so Hannah asks him to clean himself before going back to his house. While he was bathing, Hannah washes his clothes, and later she brings a towel for him. She asks him to turn around, and she removes her clothes and hugs him from behind. Then, they start to get intimate. After coming back to the house, his dad asks him what he was doing all day and he replies with a lie that he got lost in the town, but his sister replies that he is lying, because no one gets lost in their hometown. But his mom supports him by saying Micheal never lies. Then, Michael tells his dad that he wants to continue going to school the next day because he feels better. He was looking really energetic, so his dad allows him to go to school. He starts to bunk his class to meet Hannah and they are getting intimate everyday. After days, they ask each other’s names and during their conversation we get to know that Hannah is 35 and Michael is 15. Then one day, Hannah asks Michael to read Books for her and they will only get intimate after he reads books for her and he agrees.
As the day passes, one day, Michael asks Hannah for a road trip and he convinces her to go with him. Later on, they leave for the countryside on a cycle for their road trip. They both enjoys the movement and Michael starts to make feelings for her. Then they go to a restaurant and Hannah just looks at the menu card and tells the waitress that she will have the same as what Michael having. The waitress misunderstands Hannah as Michael’s mother, but to prove her wrong Michael kisses Hannah in front of her. Then they go to a church, and Hannah gets really emotional there. Then, they spent some time on a lake. Hannah swims in the lake fully naked while Michael writes a song for her, but he didn’t get the chance to read it to her. The scene changes to present day were Micheal was holding the same poem that he wrote for her. Later, he goes to court for a case. While sitting there, he again loses himself in his past memories and the scene again shifts to the past. Michael was in his class room, and we can see a girl who was his classmate and she looked really interested in him, but Michael ignores her, he was only attracted to Hannah. Oneday, Hannah gets promoted to an office job, but she doesn’t look happy about it. On Michaels birthday she gets mad at him but he manages to calm her down, and they get intimate for the last time. Later, Hannah leaves her home forever without saying anything to Michael and when Michael comes there he finds that she left him and he becomes heartbroken. Then, the scene shifts to 8 years, Michael is 23 now and he was studying in a law school. During a seminar the students visit a court during a case hearing. The case was against a group of women who was accused of the responsibility of leaving 300 Jewish womens to die in a church during fire. Those Jewish womens were prisoners who were forcefully sent as laborers, and these accused womens were the guard for that camp. Michael gets shocked when he notices Hannah among them. The main witness for this case was a young Jewish lady whose name was Llana mather. She and her mother escaped from the concentration camp and she identifies Hannah and the other women in the courtroom as guards and she says that Hannah used to pick random people to read for her. When they ask Hannah about this, she admits that they used to pick 10 people randomly and later kill them so they can keep space for the new prisoners. Hannah always picks the weak from among them and asks them to read books for her and later kills them. Also she confessed that the death of 300 Jewish womens was not an accident, someone faked her signature to make a false report about the incident so they can make it look as an accident not a murder. But the other guards gives their statement against her and they say that she was in incharge on that night and she let those Jewish women die in that church by not opening the gate for them to escape, only Llana and her mother were able to escape and Hannah was the one who wrote the false report about the incident.
Later, Hannah gets asked to take a handwriting test but she refuses and admits the crime. That time Michael realizes that Hannah was illiterate and she always hides this truth from everyone. This was the reason she never reads her book by herself and when they were in that restaurant she wasn’t able to order on her own because she couldn’t read. When she got promoted to an office job she realized that now everyone will know that she is illiterate. That’s why she left that job and later joined a concentration camp as a guard. Now Michael realizes that those other guards are trying to trap her so they can escape from the punishment, so he asks his professor for help but he says that they can’t do anything because Hannah admits the crime on her own. The only way to save her is only by admitting that she is illiterate in the next court hearing. So the next day, Michael goes to the jail so he can convince her to admit that she is illiterate in the court, but he returns without meeting her. He wants to give her the pain he felt when she left him, also he thinks that she is little responsible for that 300 Jewish women’s death. The next day, the court punishes Hannah with life sentence and the other woman guards with 4 year imprisonment. After that incident Micheal gets busy with his life, he gets married but he was never able to emotionally attach with his wife because he was still in love with Hannah, because of this after a few years he gets divorced and he also fails to keep a good relationship with his daughter Julia. One day, he finds the book that he used to read for Hannah. He reads the book and records it on tape then he sends it to Hannah. She listens to the recordings every day and she tries to learn how to read and write with the help of books from the library. After a few days she starts to write letters to Michael but he never replies. After spending 20 years in jail Hannah was going to be released. The jail warden asks help from Michael because Hannah has no family or no place to go, so Michael helps to find a new job and a home for her. 1 week before her release Michael goes to the jail to meet her. He keeps a distance from her and acts formally. Hannah tells him that before the trial she never thought about what was the mistake that she made as a guard but now she only thinks about it, she has started to feel guilt.
On her release day Michael goes to the Jail to pick her up but he sees that Hannah has committed suiside. She left a letter and a tea tin with some money in it for him. The money was her whole life savings and she wanted to give this money to that Jewish prisoner, it was her last wish and she gave the responsibility to Michael. So Michael goes to New York to meet Ilana and tells her about the past relationship between him and Hannah that he never told anyone. He also tells her about Hannah being illiterate and her last wish. Ilana refuses to take the money so Michael decides to give this money to any Jewish welfare organization which helps people for their education. Llana also agrees with him and she only keeps the tea tin with her because she used to have a tin like this which was taken from her in the camp. In the present day 1995, Michael meets his daughter Julia, she recently came back from Paris and she is now 21 years old. Michael takes her to the same church that Hannah and Michael went together on that road trip 40 years ago. They go near Hannah’s grave and Micheal starts to tell Julia about Hannah and their past relationship and the movie ends.
