To die in spring

The haunting portrayal of conflict and carnage in the final weeks of the second world war makes this German novel a modern classic . . . The boys are plunged from childhood into the abyss and this remarkable work charts a most terrible coming of age . . . The central relationship is tenderly rendered, and what the war does to it is devastating... In this, as in so much, the novel holds its own against Grass and Remarque; it is an excellent work, and one deserving of its wide readership. Rachel Seiffert Guardian