Parting

Blithe and youthful and effervescent. Written at the very end of 1932, here is a paean to Paris, to Bohemianism and cosmopolitanism, almost to the very fact of being young, with the Nazi curtain about to fall on all that and more. Imagine if some Roman bard had composed something to celebrate the fabulous Herculanean spring of, oh, 79 AD – Michael Hofmann
A sensational novel … As light and fleeting as happiness itself … It still reads almost as if we readers today could simply join this easy-going group in Paris that is being described, drink Chinese tea with them, smoke Gitanes and forget the time together – Volker Weidermann * Die Zeit *
A marvellous short novella. Melancholy, hilarious, dramatic and fateful. This is the story of a group of penniless German emigrés, would-be Bright Young Things, in 1932 Paris, written by Haffner in real time – Catherine Taylor, author of The Stirrings
A shockingly clear-sighted novel about a century-long love is now being published: Parting – Marie Schmidt * Süddeutsche Zeitung *
It is about the last moments of happiness before catastrophe – Hilmar Klute * Süddeutsche Zeitung *
Buoyant, but also elegiac … it is … exclusively, a very personal romance novel * Die Welt *
The beautiful and the terrible, the light and the heavy, are condensed here in a narrative that can develop a physical power even in the most mundane: “I felt her voice again on my eardrum.” Readers feel the same way * Der Speigel *
The story of a love that fades. And a snapshot of the generation between the two world wars, which is on its way to ruin with it eyes open * Neue Zürcher Zeitung *
Despite the novel’s pervading sense of doom, the autobiographical love story retained a sense of hope * DW News *
What a book! Lightning-fast in his use of language, sometimes breathtaking, wonderfully carefree, and written with the uninhibited dedication that only a young and still virtually unknown author has. Heartbreaking * Rheinische Post *
They are free, young, carefree, melancholic and in love … Parting tells what is lost when we fall … The characters in Parting are prodigal sons and daughters by profession, they are expected at home by parents so that they can take exams and turn into trains. They savour freedom as long as they have it. Because we readers know how dark the future will be, Parting tells of the reason of irrationality * Republik *
A romance novel; a book of youthful exuberance of emotions, in which the premonition of what is to come resonates [with readers] * SWR *
Parting describes the melancholic search for happiness and freedom in Paris in the 1930s … Fast-paced and breathless on the one hand, but then also incredibly casual, playful and fragrant in spring, this novel tells of the freedom to seek happiness in melancholy; he is also a fabulous travel guide through the Latin Quarter of the early 1930s * NDR Kultur *
So heartbreaking and yet so cold-bloodedly written … a novel that is as graceful as it is magnificent – Uwe Wittstock
His novel … is dabbed with impressionistic lightness – Matthias Zehnder
Parting is … one of the classic novels of this German period of upheaval - between the exuberantly morbid mood of optimism at the end of the 1920s and the dark shadow that the Nazi regime cast on the mind and mind before it even began … the novel brilliantly knows how to reflect the mood of the time – Peter Meisenberg

Sebastian Haffner (27 December 1907 - 2 January 1999) was a German journalist and historian. Born in 1907 in Berlin, he emigrated to England in 1938 and wrote for the Observer for many years. He returned to Germany in 1954, where he became a prominent journalist and historian.

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