One of those small but perfectly formed novelettes that comes along from time to time; published in 1971, it recounts the developing friendship between two 16 year old boys, one Jewish and the other the golden son of an aristocratic line, in early 1930s Germany as Nazism begins to make itself felt in earnest. Throughout, a misty, backward-looking atmosphere coexists with an unexpected specificity which removes the narrative from the field of nostalgia; the ending is poignant and piercing.
(This was a gift from Sarah V, who was back in Melbourne for a few days, reviving our old idea of book exchanges, and at the same time giving me a few others to add to the 'to read' pile of the floor near my desk - Durrell, Goethe, Leroux.)
