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  • Published: 21 August 1997
  • ISBN: 9781860463655
  • Imprint: Vintage Classics
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 96
  • RRP: $22.99

Reunion




From the publishers of Stoner and Revolutionary Road, comes Reunion - a forgotten classic and a moving novel of universal value

'A brilliant work of art that deserves a far wider readership' Ian McEwan

FROM THE PUBLISHERS OF STONER AND REVOLUTIONARY ROAD COMES REUNION
Reunion is a little-known novel. But it is also a universal story of friendship. It is a book of great power, waiting to be discovered.

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

  • Published: 21 August 1997
  • ISBN: 9781860463655
  • Imprint: Vintage Classics
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 96
  • RRP: $22.99

About the author

Arthur Ransome

Arthur Ransome was born in Leeds in 1884 and went to school at Rugby. He was in Russia in 1917, and witnessed the Revolution, which he reported for the Manchester Guardian.

After escaping to Scandinavia, he settled in the Lake District with his Russian wife where, in 1929, he wrote Swallows and Amazons. And so began a writing career which has produced some of the real children's treasures of all time. In 1936 he won the first ever Carnegie Medal for his book, Pigeon Post.

Ransome died in 1967. He and his wife Evgenia lie buried in the churchyard of St Paul's Church, Rusland, in the southern Lake District.

Also by Arthur Ransome

See all

Praise for Reunion

Melancholy and elegiac with a very effective final twist of the plot

The Times

Finely concise, tender and most painful

Sunday Times

A minor masterpiece. Uhlman succeeds in lending his narrative a musical quality which is both haunting and lyrical

Arthur Koestler

An exquisite novella such as Fred Uhlman's Reunion...is clearly worth much more than its weight or cover price and certainly more than the latest prize-winning bit of puff

Guardian

A book that changed me? Reunion by Fred Uhlman. I read it 20 years ago. It changed my view on Judaism

Jeffrey Archer

A profound meditation upon the nature of friendship. The first line alone is enough to send a tingle up your spine: 'He came into my life in February 1932 and never left it again'

Guardian

The interesting question now is what is the "greatest book we’ve never heard of" (Stoner’s tag)? Fred Uhlman’s Reunion (1971), to be published in July, might follow in Stoner’s footsteps... Watch this space

Independent

I think if I had to agitate for one under-mentioned title it would probably be Reunion... Maybe readers think they have read the story before. But I urge you to give it a try; it is short, and moving. I know that’s not the same as stumbling across it somewhere in the stacks...but perhaps it can qualify as a treasure all the same

Paris Review

Originally published in 1971, apparently, Reunion passed me by then but reading it now it certainly packs a punch

Guy Pringle, Nudge

I read it in a gulp...very powerful

Deborah Moggach

From the first tingle-making line...I was mesmerised by Uhlman’s heart-breaking story

Daily Mail

A little masterpiece

Val Hennessy, Daily Mail

I loved the mood of the book — it’s nostalgic and wistful without being sentimental — and it’s written in a perfectly matter-of-fact way but is done so eloquently the sentences feel as if they’ve been spun from silk. It’s a quick read, too, but it’s the kind of story that stays with you

Reading Matters

Devastating

Fiona Wilson, The Times

Never hits a false note

i (The paper for today)

It’s a good novel, a short novel, quickly and easily read, but it’s a novel that demonstrates Uhlman’s great skill because when you arrive at the last sentence (the very last sentence of the novel), you see you’ve actually missed a different arc entirely. It is this twist in the tail that has you both retreating back through the book but also (curse them) recommending it to others as well

Book Munch

I loved Reunion and found it very moving. It’s a rediscovered novella, only 80 pages long, a real gem about how friendship can be challenged by historical circumstance

John Boyne

A brilliant work of art that deserves a far wider readership

Ian McEwan

Extraordinary…one of literature’s most shattering final sentences

New York Times

Uhlman writes with a painter’s eye for the significant detail, and with the precision of someone who has learned a second language in adulthood. Every word is exactly what it must, and could only, be. Every sentence is characterized by delicacy, concision, and finesse

Church Times

Shimmers above so much of the new fiction… Brings a lump to the throat in its final line

Arifa Akbar, Independent

A daring miracle of narrative simplicity, its end comes at you like a torch in a long tunnel.

Rachel Cooke, Observer

As perfect as it is powerful

Irish Times

Quite simply, a perfect work of art. With the utmost delicacy and care, Uhlman distils all the rage and tragedy of the second world war into one brief childhood friendship, and the final line is the most shattering of any novel I know. It is one of those books that is an unfailing test of character: if you give it to someone, and they don’t like it, you should sever all ties, and possibly call the police

Sarah Perry, Guardian, Book of the Year

A perfect little gem of a story with a kick in the tail — and a resonance that rings louder than ever just when you think the story is over

Meg Rosoff

Reunion resembles that other small masterpiece, Death in Venice, by Uhlman’s compatriot Thomas Mann. Its setting may be drastically different but, in a classic, what prevails is strength of spirit over the will to power.

Amanda Hopkinson, Jewish Chronicle

[A] touching novel.

David Nicholls, Observer, Book of the Year

A beautiful story

Jeffrey Archer, Daily Express

Melancholy and elegiac with a very effective final twist of the plot

The Times

Finely concise, tender and most painful

Sunday Times

A minor masterpiece. Uhlman succeeds in lending his narrative a musical quality which is both haunting and lyrical

Arthur Koestler

An exquisite novella such as Fred Uhlman's Reunion...is clearly worth much more than its weight or cover price and certainly more than the latest prize-winning bit of puff

Guardian

A book that changed me? Reunion by Fred Uhlman. I read it 20 years ago. It changed my view on Judaism

Jeffrey Archer

A profound meditation upon the nature of friendship. The first line alone is enough to send a tingle up your spine: 'He came into my life in February 1932 and never left it again'

Guardian