We review the present understanding of etaprime and eta meson physics and
these mesons as a probe of gluon dynamics in low-energy QCD. Recent highlights
include the production mechanism of eta and etaprime mesons in proton-nucleon
collisions from threshold to high-energy, the etaprime effective mass shift in
the nuclear medium, searches for possible eta and etaprime bound states in
nuclei as well as precision measurements of eta decays as a probe of
light-quark masses. We discuss recent experimental data, theoretical
interpretation of the different measurements and the open questions and
challenges for future investigation.Comment: Review, 25 pages, 11 figures, to appear in Reviews of Modern Physic