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Andrea Hammel, Professor of German, Aberystwyth University

Parting by Sebastian Haffner: the forgotten German novel of the early 1930s that’s become a bestseller

Sebastian Haffner and his novel, Abschied (Parting). Wiki Commons/Canva, CC BY

Abschied (Parting) by Sebastian Haffner (1907-1999) is dominating the bestseller charts in Germany. It has been published posthumously, over 25 years after his death, after the manuscript was found in a drawer.

The novel is a love story between Raimund, a young non-Jewish German student of law from Berlin, and Teddy, a young Jewish woman from Vienna. Raimund and Teddy meet on August 31 1930 in Berlin and the novel covers the time they spend in Berlin and Paris together.

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