The Reader (Der Vorleser)

Census claim confirmed. The German edition is the true first — Der Vorleser, Diogenes Verlag, Zurich, 1995 — and any English 'first edition' is a translation two years later. Both 1997 English editions use Carol Brown Janeway's translation and both are collected: Pantheon Books, New York, is the first American edition and is generally accorded precedence within 1997, with Phoenix House, London, the first UK edition. Priority between the two is a publication-date question rather than a textual one; the honest formulation is 'first American' or 'first UK', not an unqualified 'first in English'.