Hard as nails

Chock full of military fat to chew on...will keep you awake until dawn

Hard to put down...There's plenty of action, loads of claret, emotional and physical kickings a-plenty. It's a rock-solid story which is soundly told by Ryan

Explosive plot...gritted teeth adrenaline

If you want to become familiar with the lanista and the rudus, to know your scutum from your licium, then Kane's your man ... plenty of action

Spartacus has returned home to Thrace to find a new king has usurped his throne. He is seized and then sold to a Roman slave trader but he is a fighter and is destined for greater things.
Historically little is known about the real Spartacus but in the hands of Ben Kane his legend has been crafted into two fantastic novels and this is the first.

A breathless romp…a real feel for the grit and the mad excitement of fighting and a fascination with a culture, Rome, that was obsessed with blood-lust.

From the first tingle-making line...I was mesmerised by Uhlman’s heart-breaking story

An exquisite novella such as Fred Uhlman's Reunion...is clearly worth much more than its weight or cover price and certainly more than the latest prize-winning bit of puff

Melancholy and elegiac with a very effective final twist of the plot

The interesting question now is what is the “greatest book we’ve never heard of” (Stoner’s tag)? Fred Uhlman’s Reunion (1971), to be published in July, might follow in Stoner’s footsteps... Watch this space

A minor masterpiece. Uhlman succeeds in lending his narrative a musical quality which is both haunting and lyrical

A profound meditation upon the nature of friendship. The first line alone is enough to send a tingle up your spine: 'He came into my life in February 1932 and never left it again'

A book that changed me? Reunion by Fred Uhlman. I read it 20 years ago. It changed my view on Judaism

Originally published in 1971, apparently, Reunion passed me by then but reading it now it certainly packs a punch

A little masterpiece

I loved the mood of the book — it’s nostalgic and wistful without being sentimental — and it’s written in a perfectly matter-of-fact way but is done so eloquently the sentences feel as if they’ve been spun from silk. It’s a quick read, too, but it’s the kind of story that stays with you

Devastating

Never hits a false note

It’s a good novel, a short novel, quickly and easily read, but it’s a novel that demonstrates Uhlman’s great skill because when you arrive at the last sentence (the very last sentence of the novel), you see you’ve actually missed a different arc entirely. It is this twist in the tail that has you both retreating back through the book but also (curse them) recommending it to others as well

Extraordinary…one of literature’s most shattering final sentences

Uhlman writes with a painter’s eye for the significant detail, and with the precision of someone who has learned a second language in adulthood. Every word is exactly what it must, and could only, be. Every sentence is characterized by delicacy, concision, and finesse

Shimmers above so much of the new fiction… Brings a lump to the throat in its final line

A daring miracle of narrative simplicity, its end comes at you like a torch in a long tunnel.

As perfect as it is powerful

Reunion resembles that other small masterpiece, Death in Venice, by Uhlman’s compatriot Thomas Mann. Its setting may be drastically different but, in a classic, what prevails is strength of spirit over the will to power.

[A] touching novel.

A beautiful story