Hatchards’ bookstore at St. Pancras station in London is small, but its staff have a talent for displaying lesser-known titles in a way that catches the eye of browsers like me.  They seem especially interested in promoting neglected classics and on more than one occasion I’ve discovered a book I’ve ended up loving and recommending to friends.  Reunion, a slim novella by Fred Uhlman first published in 1971, is one such gem.

The story is set in Germany in 1932. Two teenage schoolboys, innocent and unworldly, become firm friends. One, Hans, is Jewish, the son of a doctor. The other, Konradin, is a Protestant from a distinguished, aristocratic family.  All is innocence and purity. It’s Eden before the fall, the calm before the hurricane that would transform the world. But even in their sheltered, civilized town, disturbing rumors reach them from Berlin that Germany is changing and that it’s no longer safe to be Jewish.

The power of Reunion, a short and simply told story, is very difficult to describe.  All I can say is that in fewer than a hundred pages it speaks of innocence, awakening, horror, and some kind of redemption from a time in our recent history that all of the world’s literature will never explain adequately.  The rest I will leave to Rachel Seiffert’s elegant Afterword to the novel. “It is rare to use the word perfect to describe a book.  I don’t hesitate here”.  Neither do I.