Literature
End of the World Reading List – Part three
ArtsWom have been asking literary bloggers from across the World Wide Web to share the books they would most want to snuggle down and read as the world crumbles apart around them. The latest to respond to this question is Helen, writer of the blog No Such Thing As Too Many Books, who chose Reunion by Fred Uhlman. Find out why below…
Although a part of me thinks I ought to read a book I’d never read - one of the many I’ve been ‘meaning to’ read for years but never got round to (such as Anna Karenina or Crime and Punishment), I would probably go for this one, Reunion by Fred Uhlman, which I’ve read several times already. Barely the length of a novella, it’s the book that has probably affected me more profoundly than any other.
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.
Thanks Helen.
I find it interesting how everyone who has answered this question so far has chosen to re-read a favourite of theirs rather than try a new book. Would anyone want to spend their last moments alive risking an untested read, or would we all like the comfort of the familiar before the end…?
I can imagine being hugely annoyed if the last book I ever read proved to be a duffer, which I suspect is why people tend to go for ‘tried and tested’ rather than face the angst of literally last-minute disappointment
Posted by Helen • 7 February 2008 at 4:08 pm
Hi Helen, I completely agree! Also, I suppose that even if your choice for a new book proved to be a total hit, you risk the chance of the comet/nuclear war/swarm of plague monkeys hitting sooner than expected and never, ever finding out how it ends!
Posted by Seb • 7 February 2008 at 5:25 pm