He tells Gustav: “We have to become the people we always should have been.”' And what ultimately matters here – the heart of this remarkable and moving novel – is Anton’s imperative. Without giving away the ending, she has the most merciful, believable and uplifting surprise in store. But Tremain is anything but an indulgent writer and is, here, writing at the height of her inimitable powers. It is a bleak novel and inspires pity for its characters – that most uncomfortable but nonetheless interesting emotion. Kate Kellaway writing in The Guardian praises the novel: 'Tremain is penetrating in describing the way in which one person’s happiness is sometimes another’s discomfiture – jealousy love’s neighbour.

Anton and Hans become lovers but Anton then has a breakdown. Where his playing of Beethoven sonatas bring him the attention of music impresario Hans Hirsch who takes Anton to Geneva to record Meanwhile Anton is now a Music Director at an academy, Gustav now runs a hotel in Matzingan, and resolves to find out about his father and he contacts Lottie who tells him about her loverĮrich, and as the Hotel requires updating he accompanies Lottie to Paris. Erich then suddenly dies of a heart attack on the way to meet Then Emilie returns and they have a child, Gustav. Erich has an affair with Lottie, the wife of Loses his job and his apartment as a result and, Emilie moves to live with her mother. Erich then starts falsifying entry dates to allow Jews to enter Switzerland, he therefore Erich arranges a holiday toĭavos, to rebuild their relationship. She gets pregnant and they marry, but the pressure of the Jews migrating across theĪustrian-Swiss border make her husband's job difficult, and he pushes her and they lose the baby.

The Assistant Police Chief in Matzlingan. Gustav then joins the Zwiebels on a holiday to Davos where the boys playīefore the war, Gustav's mother Emilia attends the local Schwingfest wrestling festival where she falls for Erich Perle, Gustav's father died mysteriously during the war, Anton is Jewish and plays the piano, but he comes last in a competition inīern where his family and Gustav are in the audience. Set in post-war Switzerland where Gustav Perle and his best friend Anton Zwiebel live in a fictional small town called Matzlingan. It was loosely based on Paul Grüninger, Police Chief of the Canton of St Gallen in 1937.

It won the National Jewish Book Award in 2016 and the Ribalow Prize in 2017 and it was also shortlisted for the Costa Book Awards and the Walter Scott Prize in 2016 and longlisted for the Baileys Women’s Prize for Fiction in 2017. The Gustav Sonata is a novel by English author Rose Tremain published in 2016 by Chatto & Windus.

The Gustav Sonata by Rose Tremain