Reünie : een novelle (original 1971; edition 1987)

I thought it beautiful, perfectly constructed, and heartbreaking. The final sentence, when we learn of Konradin's fate, made my stomach lurch - horrifying, and yet a vindication of a friendship. Essentially this is a love story, undemonstrative, unsentimentally told. Beautiful. [Aug 1995]

On the face of it, it's a simple tale. The year is 1932, and a friendship forms between classmates Hans Schwartz and the aristocratic Konradin von Hohenfels. Hans is Jewish; Konradin's mother keeps a picture of Hitler on her dresser. Inexorably, the boys' simple world begins to change. Political events test their friendship. What makes this book truly special - apart from Uhlman's unsentimental writing - is the ending, when, many years later and living in America, Hans learns something about his former friend. I can't tell you what that something is without giving away a denouement that you really need to read for yourself; suffice it to say that the first time I read the book, the ending affected me to such an extent that I felt as if I'd been punched in the stomach.

Of the many books that I treasure, this is probably the book that means the most to me. If the world were to end, this is the book I'd read to remind myself of what it means to be human in an often brutal world. [February 2008] ( )

Ranks with the best novellas of all time. ( )

Set mostly before WWII, this story about a Jewish adolescent (who must flee his beloved Germany) and his Stauffenberg-like friend juxtaposes 'heiliges Deutschland' and its 1930's aberration. ( )

Konradin Von Hohenfels

Arthur Koestler described this novella as a "minor masterpiece". I would agree as it is a perceptive short novel about friendship. However, set in the 1930s in Stuttgart, it is also a tragedy and a story about love. It tells of two boys attending high school, one is a Jewish intellectual from the middle class while the other is a young aristocratic gentile. The story is as moving as the friendship is unremarkable, yet it lingers in one's memory. It is a literary miniature that is as moving as books more than twice its size. . . ( )