The Gustav Sonata (Paperback)

Waterstones Fiction Book of the Month for February (2017)

Shortlisted for the Costa Novel Award 2016

‘It is no use asking what happened, Gustav… How can I possibly know? Everything in the war depended on who you were and where you were. And then destiny took over.’

What is the difference between friendship and love? Or between neutrality and commitment?

Gustav Perle grows up in a small town in 'neutral' 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 childhood is spent in lonely isolation, his only toy a tin train with painted passengers staring blankly from the carriage windows. As time goes on, an intense friendship with a boy of his own age, Anton Zwiebel, begins to define Gustav's life. Jewish and mercurial, a talented pianist tortured by nerves when he has to play in public, Anton fails to understand how deeply and irrevocably his life and Gustav's are entwined.

Fierce, astringent, profoundly tender, Rose Tremain's beautifully orchestrated novel asks the question, what does it do to a person, or to a country, to pursue an eternal quest for neutrality, and self-mastery, while all life's hopes and passions continually press upon the borders and beat upon the gate.

A mainstay of contemporary literary fiction and a permanent resident on the shelves of Waterstones’ Fiction sections, Rose Tremain was one of only five women on the original Granta list of Best Young British Novelists in 1983. Since then her ever-inventive eye has ranged widely encompassing intricately detailed historical fiction such as Restoration (for which she won the Whitbread Award) and Music and Silence to contemporary novels The Road Home and Trespass.

Read a Waterstones exclusive interview with Rose Tremain in which she discusses The Gustav Sonata, the cost oof emotional reticence, the music of fiction and the vital importance of friendship.