Overview

A deceptively simple, emotionally powerful novella about an intense friendship between two teenage boys that begins in Germany in 1932 - under the shadow of Hitler's rise to power - and reverberates across the decades. The romantic forested landscape of southwest Germany is the setting for the birth of a friendship that will haunt sixteen-year-old Hans Schwarz for the rest of his life. Hans is Jewish, the son of a doctor who is confident that the rise of the Nazis is only 'a temporary illness' afflicting his beloved country. Hans's new classmate, Konradin von Hohenfels, is a dazzling young aristocrat whose mother keeps a portrait of Hitler on her dressing-table. Hans is immediately drawn to Konradin, and thrilled when a close bond forms between them, forged by common interests that set them apart from the other boys. But their loyalties are soon tested in ways they could not have imagined. Three decades later, from the vantage point of New York City, Hans once again confronts this life-shaping episode from his youth, through a stunning revelation that he stumbles upon by chance. In its story of friendship undone by History, Reunion combines the explosive compression of a fable with the emotional depth of an epic novel many times its length.

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9781841594088

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Reviews

A daring miracle of narrative simplicity, [Reunion's] end comes at you like a torch in a long tunnel. All is black, calamitously beyond words, and yet the eye, swiftly followed by the heart, is drawn to it: at last, a circle of light. Even if history cannot be rewritten, Uhlman tells us, a life may sometimes have more than one act. --The Guardian Eloquent . . . Written in English by artist Fred Uhlman, who fled his homeland in 1933, Reunion is as perfect as it is powerful. --The Irish Times Describes the deepest and most profound friendship between two boys . . . who are ultimately separated by history . . . Devastating. --The Times (London) Still somehow Reunion remains a secret . . . . Word of mouth still passes it, like the discovery of a hidden gem, from astonished reader to reader. So many readers know and love it as the classic it is and yet somehow it continues existence under the radar, a constant source of surprise to anyone happening across it for the first time. But then, surprise is a core part of its perennial gift. It's a novella whose slimness belies its heft. Its impact is stunning. --from the Introduction by Ali Smith

Author Information

"Fred Uhlman (Author) Fred Uhlman, born in Stuttgart in 1901, claimed that his South-West German homeland of W rttemberg, made him a ""romantic"" for life and formed the essence of his sensibilities as a poet. Understandable since it was also the home of Schiller, H lderlin, M rike, Weiland, Uhland, Schlegel, Hegel, Schelling and Herman Hesse. Uhlman's name is not out of place among these, and the beauty of that birthplace illuminates every line of his stunning fictional memoir Reunion. He died in 1985. Ali Smith (Introducer) Ali Smith was born in Inverness in 1962. She is the author of Spring, Winter, Autumn, Public library and other stories, How to be both, Shire, Artful, There but for the, The first person and other stories, Girl Meets Boy, The Accidental, The whole story and other stories, Hotel World, Other stories and other stories, Like and Free Love. Hotel World was shortlisted for the Booker Prize and the Orange Prize. The Accidental was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize and the Orange Prize. How to be both won the Bailey's Prize, the Goldsmiths Prize and the Costa Novel of the Year Award, and was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize. Autumn was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize 2017 and Winter was shortlisted for the Orwell Prize 2018. Ali Smith lives in Cambridge."

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