The Gustav Sonata: The Sunday Times bestselling deeply moving novel set in Switzerland tracing a lifelong friendship shaped by love and silence - Softcover

Tremain, Rose

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1784700207 ISBN 13: 9781784700201

Publisher: Vintage, 2017

Synopsis

Gustav Perle grows up lonely and watchful in post-war Switzerland, aching for a closeness his own mother cannot give him.

In a small Swiss town still marked by the moral compromises of the Second World War, Gustav finds the companionship he longs for in Anton Zwiebel, a brilliant, fragile boy whose music expresses what neither of them can say aloud. Their bond, forged in childhood in the late 1940s, deepens into an intense attachment that neither fully understands.

The Gustav Sonata follows Gustav and Anton through love, disappointment, and the slow realisation of what they have lost as a result of fear and restraint. Set between the 1940s and early 2000s, The Gustav Sonata is a twentieth-century historical novel that asks what it means to love someone you cannot fully claim, and whether tenderness can survive decades of silence.

‘A perfect novel about life's imperfection... Tremain is writing at the height of her inimitable powers’ Kate Kellaway, Observer

‘Tremain has the painterly genius of an Old Master, and she uses it to stunning effect... Glorious’ The Times

About this title

About the Author

Rose Tremain's novels and short stories have been published in thirty countries and have won many awards, including the Orange Prize (The Road Home), the Dylan Thomas Award (The Colonel's Daughter and Other Stories), the Whitbread Novel of the Year (Music & Silence) the James Tait Black Memorial Prize and the Prix Femina in France (Sacred Country) and the South Bank Sky Arts Award (The Gustav Sonata). Her most recent novel is Lily, a Richard and Judy Book Club selection. Rose Tremain was made a CBE in 2007 and a Dame in 2020. She lives in Norfolk and London with the biographer, Richard Holmes.

From the Back Cover

Gustav grows up in a small town in Switzerland, where the horrors of the Second World War seem a distant echo. But Gustav’s father has mysteriously died, and his adored mother Emilie is strangely cold and indifferent to him. Gustav’s life is a lonely one until he meets Anton. An intense lifelong friendship develops but Anton fails to understand how deeply and irrevocably his life and Gustav’s are entwined until it is almost too late...

From the Inside Flap

What is the difference between friendship and love?

Gustav grows up in a small town in Switzerland, where the horrors of the Second World War seem a distant echo. But Gustav's father has mysteriously died, and his adored mother Emilie is strangely cold and indifferent to him. Gustav's life is a lonely one until he meets Anton. An intense lifelong friendship develops but Anton fails to understand how deeply and irrevocably his life and Gustav's are entwined until it is almost too late...

Edition details

• Publisher: Vintage
• Publication date: 2017
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1784700207
• ISBN 13: 9781784700201
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 320