cover image Latecomers

Latecomers

Anita Brookner. Vintage Books USA, $15 (256pp) ISBN 978-0-679-72668-5

This tender study of a friendship between two men is extraordinary for the beauty of its prose and its sheer depth of feeling. Hartmann and Fibich, united as schoolboys when they were refugees from the Nazis, are now partners in a London printing business--and respond to their shared past in quite different ways. ``Brookner has produced a quiet little masterpiece,'' said PW. (Feb.)