Reunion

A daring novella about the loss of innocence in pre-war Germany. Reunion is the story of intense and innocent devotion between two young men growing up in "the soft, serene, bluish hills of Swabia," and the sinister (but all too mundane) forces that end both their friendship and their childhood. The year is 1932. Hans Schwartz is Jewish, the son of a Stuttgart doctor who asserts that the rise of the Nazis is "a temporary illness, something like measles which will pass off as soon as the economic situation improves." The Holocaust would be unthinkable for these characters, but of course it looms over the story: Hans's friend, the young Count Konradin von Hohenfels, has a mother who keeps a portrait of Hitler on her dresser. The two boys share their most private thoughts and trips to the countryside of southwest Germany, discuss poetry and the past and present of their country, and argue the existence of a benevolent God. Selected as a Book of the Year 2016 in the Guardian Reunion is a little-known but perfect novel with fans including Ian McEwan, John Boyne, Deborah Moggach, David Nicholls, Meg Rosoff and Sarah Perry. On a grey afternoon in 1932, a Stuttgart classroom is stirred by the arrival of a newcomer. Middle-class Hans is intrigued by the aristocratic new boy, Konradin, and before long they become best friends. It's a friendship of the greatest kind, of shared interests and long conversations, of hikes in the German hills and growing up together. But the boys live in a changing Germany. Powerful, delicate and daring, Reunion is a story of the fragility, and strength, of the bonds between friends. 'Exquisite' Guardian 'I loved Reunion and found it very moving' John Boyne WITH AN AFTERWORD BY RACHEL SEIFFERT Middle-class, Jewish Hans forms an intense friendship with Konradin, the young aristocrat in his class. A year later it is over. Nothing remarkable, except that it is 1932 and we are in Germany. Reunion is a profound look at both the nature of friendhsip and the effect of Hitler's rise to power on the lives of all Germans. HE came into my life in February 1932 and never left it again.