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The first-ever volume of the photographs of German writer W.G.
Sebald, exquisitely designed to shed new light on his creative
process, as it chronicles the images and encounters that shaped his
writing life. Shadows of Reality presents a unique, fully
illustrated catalogue of W.G. Sebald's photographs- an
extraordinary combination of film negatives, prints, and slides
from the University of East Anglia's photographic collection, the
Deutsches Literaturarchiv Marbach, and the Sebald Estate.
Complementing the exhibition Lines of Sight- W.G. Sebald's East
Anglia and edited by literary scholar Clive Scott and photography
curator Nick Warr, this wonderfully comprehensive book covers the
multiple photographic facets of Sebald's published work and
includes a substantial amount of material that has not been made
public before. Introduced by Nick Warr, who offers an intriguing
overview of the author's critical relationship to photography,
Shadows of Reality also includes an illuminating interview with
Michael Brandon-Jones, the photographer who collaborated with
Sebald on all of his publications. The book features a collection
of extracts-principally on photography-from interviews with Sebald
himself, bequeathed to the archive of recordings held at the
University of East Anglia by his close friend Gordon Turner, who
also provides a memoir. Accompanying these are inspired essays by
Clive Scott and Angela Breidbach on Sebald's
writing-with-photographs and the complex and mercurial interactions
of those photographs with narrative design. A deeply important
collection for anyone interested in Sebald's creative processes or
the ways in which photography might serve fiction, Shadows of
Reality is an inexhaustible treasure trove of new discoveries and
revelations about the cherished international author.
New Directions is delighted to announce beautiful new editions of
these three classic Sebald novels, including his two greatest
works, The Emigrants and The Rings of Saturn. All three novels are
distinguished by their translations, every line of which Sebald
himself made pitch-perfect, slaving to carry into English all his
essential elements: the shadows, the lambent fallings-back,
nineteenth-century Germanic undertones, tragic elegiac notes, and
his unique, quiet wit.
Part fiction, part travelogue, the narrator of this compelling masterpiece pursues his solitary, eccentric course from England to Italy and beyond, succumbing to the vertiginous unreliability of memory itself. What could possibly connect Stendhal's unrequited love, the artistry of Pisanello, a series of murders by a clandestine organisation, a missing passport, Casanova, the suicide of a dinner companion, stale apple cake, the Great Fire of London, a story by Kafka about a doomed huntsman and a closed-down pizzeria in Verona?
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Air Raid (Paperback)
Alexander Kluge, Martin Chalmers, W. G. Sebald
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R283
R235
Discovery Miles 2 350
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A powerful work by the heralded writer, this collection is a
touchstone event in German literature of the post-war era. On April
8, 1945, several American bomber squadrons were informed that their
German targets were temporarily unavailable due to cloud cover. As
it was too late to turn back, the assembled ordnance of more than
two hundred bombers was diverted to nearby Halberstadt. A mid-sized
cathedral town of no particular industrial or strategic importance,
Halberstadt was almost totally destroyed, and a
then-thirteen-year-old Alexander Kluge watched his town burn to the
ground. Incorporating photographs, diagrams, and drawings, Kluge
captures the overwhelming rapidity and totality of the organized
destruction of his town from numerous perspectives, bringing to
life both the strategy from above and the futility of the response
on the ground. Originally published in German in 1977, this
exquisite report, fragmentary and unfinished, is one of Kluge's
most personal works and one of the best examples of his literary
technique. The English edition of Air Rair includes additional new
stories by the author and features an appreciation of the work by
W. G. Sebald. "More than a few of Kluge's many books are essential,
brilliant achievements. None are without great interest."-Susan
Sontag
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Austerlitz (Paperback)
W. G. Sebald; Introduction by James Wood; Translated by Anthea Bell
1
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R405
R330
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A classic novel of post-war Europe, haunting and timelessly
beautiful 'The greatest writer of our time' Peter Carey In 1939,
five-year-old Jacques Austerlitz is sent to England on a
Kindertransport and placed with foster parents. This childless
couple promptly erase from the boy all knowledge of his identity
and he grows up ignorant of his past. Later in life, after a career
as an architectural historian, Austerlitz - having avoided all
clues that might point to his origin - finds the past returning to
haunt him and he is forced to explore what happened fifty years
before. Austerlitz is W.G. Sebald's melancholic masterpiece.
'Mesmeric, haunting and heartbreakingly tragic. Simply no other
writer is writing or thinking on the same level as Sebald' Eileen
Battersby, Irish Times 'Greatness in literature is still possible'
John Banville, Irish Times, Books of the Year 'A work of obvious
genius' Literary Review 'A fusion of the mystical and the solid ...
His art is a form of justice - there can be, I think, no higher
aim' Evening Standard 'Spellbindingly accomplished; a work of art'
The Times Literary Supplement 'I have never read a book that
provides such a powerful account of the devastation wrought by the
dispersal of the Jews from Prague and their treatment by the Nazis'
Observer 'A great book by a great writer' Boyd Tonkin, Independent
W . G. Sebald was born in Wertach im Allgau, Germany, in 1944 and
died in December 2001. He studied German language and literature in
Freiburg, Switzerland and Manchester. In 1996 he took up a position
as an assistant lecturer at the University of Manchester and
settled permanently in England in 1970. He was Professor of
European Literature at the University of East Anglia and is the
author of The Emigrants, The Rings of Saturn, Vertigo, Austerlitz,
After Nature, On the Natural History of Destruction, Campo Santo,
Unrecounted, A Place in the Country. His selected poetry is
published in a volume called Across the Land and the Water.
The Rings of Saturn-with its curious archive of photographs-records
a walking tour of the eastern coast of England. A few of the things
which cross the path and mind of its narrator (who both is and is
not Sebald) are lonely eccentrics, Sir Thomas Browne's skull, a
matchstick model of the Temple of Jerusalem, recession-hit seaside
towns, wooded hills, Joseph Conrad, Rembrandt's "Anatomy Lesson,"
the natural history of the herring, the massive bombings of WWII,
the dowager Empress Tzu Hsi, and the silk industry in Norwich. W.G.
Sebald's The Emigrants (New Directions, 1996) was hailed by Susan
Sontag as an "astonishing masterpiece perfect while being unlike
any book one has ever read." It was "one of the great books of the
last few years," noted Michael Ondaatje, who now acclaims The Rings
of Saturn "an even more inventive work than its predecessor, The
Emigrants."
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The Emigrants (Paperback)
W. G. Sebald; Translated by Michael Hulse
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R462
R374
Discovery Miles 3 740
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The four long narratives in The Emigrants appear at first to be the
straightforward biographies of four Germans in exile. Sebald
reconstructs the lives of a painter, a doctor, an elementary-school
teacher, and Great Uncle Ambrose. Following (literally) in their
footsteps, the narrator retraces routes of exile which lead from
Lithuania to London, from Munich to Manchester, from the South
German provinces to Switzerland, France, New York, Constantinople,
and Jerusalem. Along with memories, documents, and diaries of the
Holocaust, he collects photographs-the enigmatic snapshots which
stud The Emigrants and bring to mind family photo albums. Sebald
combines precise documentary with fictional motifs, and as he puts
the question to realism, the four stories merge into one
unfathomable requiem.
A Walking tour through the haunted landscapes of the past, in the company of the exiled and the departed.The Rings of Saturn begins as the record of a journey on foot through coastal East Anglia. From Lowestoft to Southwold to Bungay, Sebald's own story becomes the conductor of evocations of people and cultures past and present: of Chateau briand, Thomas Browne, Swinburne and Conrad, of fishing fleets, skulls and silkworms. The result is a book unlike any other in contemporary literature, an intricately patterned and endlessly thought-provoking meditation on the transience of all things human.
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Vertigo (Paperback)
W. G. Sebald; Translated by Michael Hulse
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R466
R379
Discovery Miles 3 790
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Perfectly titled, Vertigo -W.G. Sebald's marvelous first novel - is
a work that teeters on the edge: compelling, puzzling, and deeply
unsettling. An unnamed narrator, beset by nervous ailments,
journeys accross Europe to Vienna, Venice, Verona, Riva, and
finally to his childhood home in a small Bavarian village. He is
also journeying into the past. Traveling in the footsteps of
Stendhal, Casanova, and Kafka, the narrator draws the reader, line
by line, into a dizzying web of history, biography, legends,
literature, and - most perilously - memories.
At first The Emigrants appears simply to document the lives of four Jewish émigrés in the twentieth century. But gradually, as Sebald's precise, almost dreamlike prose begins to work its magic, the four narrations merge into one overwhelming evocation of exile and loss.
'Sebald is the Joyce of the 21st Century' The Times What begins as
the record of W. G. Sebald's own journey on foot through coastal
East Anglia, from Lowestoft to Bungay, becomes the conductor of
evocations of people and cultures past and present. From
Chateaubriand, Thomas Browne, Swinburne and Conrad, to fishing
fleets, skulls and silkworms, the result is an intricately
patterned and haunting book on the transience of all things human.
'A novel of ideas with a difference: it is nothing but ideas...
Formally dexterous, fearlessly written (why shouldn't an essay be a
novel?), and unremittingly arcane; by the end I was in tears' Teju
Cole, Guardian
Encountering an eccentric cast of characters along the way, Sebald
confronts the frailty of human existence as he voyages along the
Suffolk coast on foot. What begins as the record of a journey on
foot through coastal East Anglia becomes the great, constellated
story of people and cultures past and present: of Chateaubriand,
Thomas Browne, Swinburne and Conrad, of fishing fleets, skulls and
silkworms. A rich meditation on the past via a melancholy trip
along the Suffolk coast, The Rings of Saturn is an intricately
patterned and haunting book on the transience of all things human.
VINTAGE VOYAGES: A world of journeys, from the tallest mountains to
the depths of the mind
Three men walk the pages of W. G. Sebald’s first literary work – the painter Mathias Grünewald, the botanist G. W. Steller and W. G. Sebald himself. Written as a long poem in three parts, After Nature delves into each of these lives in turn, teasing out the haunting uncertainties of the past and revealing the terrible burden that history places on all of our shoulders.
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Austerlitz (Paperback)
W. G. Sebald; Introduction by James Wood; Translated by Anthea Bell
1
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R294
R254
Discovery Miles 2 540
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Austerlitz is W. G. Sebald's haunting novel of post-war Europe. In
1939, five-year-old Jacques Austerlitz is sent to England on a
Kindertransport and placed with foster parents. This childless
couple promptly erase from the boy all knowledge of his identity
and he grows up ignorant of his past. Later in life, after a career
as an architectural historian, Austerlitz - having avoided all
clues that might point to his origin - finds the past returning to
haunt him and he is forced to explore what happened fifty years
before. Austerlitz is W.G. Sebald's melancholic masterpiece.
'Mesmeric, haunting and heartbreakingly tragic. Simply no other
writer is writing or thinking on the same level as Sebald' Eileen
Battersby, Irish Times 'Greatness in literature is still possible'
John Banville, Irish Times, Books of the Year 'A work of obvious
genius' Literary Review 'A fusion of the mystical and the solid ...
His art is a form of justice - there can be, I think, no higher
aim' Evening Standard 'Spellbindingly accomplished; a work of art'
The Times Literary Supplement 'I have never read a book that
provides such a powerful account of the devastation wrought by the
dispersal of the Jews from Prague and their treatment by the Nazis'
Observer 'A great book by a great writer' Boyd Tonkin, Independent
W . G. Sebald was born in Wertach im Allgau, Germany, in 1944 and
died in December 2001. He studied German language and literature in
Freiburg, Switzerland and Manchester. In 1996 he took up a position
as an assistant lecturer at the University of Manchester and
settled permanently in England in 1970. He was Professor of
European Literature at the University of East Anglia and is the
author of The Emigrants, The Rings of Saturn, Vertigo, Austerlitz,
After Nature, On the Natural History of Destruction, Campo Santo,
Unrecounted, A Place in the Country. His selected poetry is
published in a volume called Across the Land and the Water.
This tenth anniversary edition of W. G. Sebald's celebrated
masterpiece includes a new Introduction by acclaimed critic James
Wood. "Austerlitz" is the story of a man's search for the answer to
his life's central riddle. A small child when he comes to England
on a "Kindertransport" in the summer of 1939, Jacques Austerlitz is
told nothing of his real family by the Welsh Methodist minister and
his wife who raise him. When he is a much older man, fleeting
memories return to him, and obeying an instinct he only dimly
understands, Austerlitz follows their trail back to the world he
left behind a half century before. There, faced with the void at
the heart of twentieth-century Europe, he struggles to rescue his
heritage from oblivion.
A stunningly beautiful selection of poetry by W. G. Sebald. 'The
greatest writer of our time' Peter Carey Across the Land and the
Water brings together poems from throughout W. G. Sebald's life as
well as additional works found after his death. Arranged
chronologically, from his student days in the 1960s to the longer
narratives he worked on in the 1980s, these poems are suffused by
the themes which dominated Sebald's books. Here you will find
subtle vignettes on nature and history, death and memory, journeys
and landscapes, each short piece filled with insight, sensitivity
and brilliance. 'An important book . . . full of things that are
beautiful and fascinating' Andrew Motion, Guardian 'When you read
Sebald you are transported to another realm. Reading him is a truly
sublime experience' Literary Review 'Gracefully unsettling. The
poems invest every landscape with an archaeologist's sense of the
pain, toil and loss secreted in each layer of soil' Independent
'One of the most important writers of our time' A. S. Byatt
'Delightful' Economist 'Show a humane and complex intelligence and
deserve a place next to Sebald's prose output' New Statesman W. G.
Sebald was born in Wertach im Allgau, Germany, in 1944 and died in
December 2001. He studied German language and literature in
Freiburg, Switzerland and Manchester. In 1996 he took up a position
as an assistant lecturer at the University of Manchester and
settled permanently in England in 1970. He was Professor of
European Literature at the University of East Anglia and is the
author of The Emigrants, The Rings of Saturn, Vertigo, Austerlitz,
After Nature, On the Natural History of Destruction, Campo Santo,
Unrecounted, A Place in the Country.
"A splendid addition to an already extraordinary oeuvre."--Teju
Cole, "The New Yorker"
German-born W. G. Sebald is best known as the innovative author of
"Austerlitz, "the prose classic of World War II culpability and
conscience that put its author in the company of Nabokov, Calvino,
and Borges. Now comes the first major collection of this literary
master's poems. Skillfully translated by Iain Galbraith, they range
from pieces Sebald wrote as a student in the sixties to those
completed right before his untimely death in 2001. In nearly one
hundred poems--the majority published in English for the first
time--Sebald explores his trademark themes, from nature and
history, to wandering and wondering, to oblivion and memory.
Soaring and searing, the poetry of W. G. Sebald is an indelible
addition to his superb body of work, and this collection is bound
to become a classic in its own right.
"How fortunate we are to have this writer's startling imagination
freshly on display once again, expressed in language honed to a
perfect simplicity."--Billy Collins
"A watershed volume . . . nothing less than
transcendent."--"BookPage"
" Sebald was] a defining writer of his era."--"The New Republic"
In this final collection of sixteen essays by W. G. Sebald, one of
the most elegant and incisive authors of our time, all of his
trademark themes are contained-the power of memory and personal
history, the connections between images in the arts and life, the
presence of ghosts in places and artifacts.
Four pieces pay tribute to the Mediterranean island of Corsica,
weaving elegiacally between past and present. In "A Little
Excursion to Ajaccio," Sebald visits the birthplace of Napoleon and
muses on the hints in his childhood home of a great man's future.
Inspired by an Italian cemetery, "Campo Santo" is a reverie on
death, ranging from the ambiguity of inscriptions to the size of
and adornment of gravestones to the blood-soaked legend of Saint
Julien.
Sebald also examines how the works of Gunter Grass and Heinrich
Boll reveal "the grave and lasting deformities in the emotional
lives" of postwar Germans, how Kafka echoes Sebald's own interest
in spirit presences among mortal beings, and how literature can be
an attempt at restitution for the injustices of the real world.
Dazzling in its erudition, accessible in its deep emotion, "Campo
Santo confirms Sebald's place beside Proust and Nabokov, great
writers who perceive the invisible connections that determine our
lives.
"From the Hardcover edition.
In the last years of World War II, the Allies dropped a million
bombs on Germany. Yet the German people have been silent about the
resulting devestation and loss of life, failing to recognise the
terrible shadow that destruction from the air cast over their land.
Here W.G. Sebald asks why it is we turn our backs on the horrors of
war, and in addressing our response to the past, offers insights
into how we live now.
A Place in the Country is a window into the brilliant mind of W. G.
Sebald 'The greatest writer of our time' Peter Carey When W. G.
Sebald travelled to Manchester in 1966, he packed in his bags
certain literary favourites which would remain central to him
throughout the rest of his life and during the years when he was
settled in England. In A Place in the Country, he reflects on six
of the figures who shaped him as a person and as a writer, from
Jean-Jacques Rousseau to Jan Peter Tripp. Fusing biography and
essay, and finding, as ever, inspiration in place - as when he
journeys to the Ile St. Pierre, the tiny, lonely Swiss island where
Jean-Jacques Rousseau found solace and inspiration - Sebald
lovingly brings his subjects to life in his distinctive, inimitable
voice. 'A fascinating volume that confirms Sebald as one of
Europe's most mysterious and best-loved literary imaginations'
Evening Standard 'Sebald was in possession of the uncanny ability
to make his own intellectual obsessions, immediately, compulsively
his reader's' Observer 'Irresistible . . . an intimate anatomy of
the pathos, absurdity and perverse splendour of trying to find
patterns in the chaos of the world' Independent W . G. Sebald was
born in Wertach im Allgau, Germany, in 1944 and died in December
2001. He studied German language and literature in Freiburg,
Switzerland and Manchester. In 1996 he took up a position as an
assistant lecturer at the University of Manchester and settled
permanently in England in 1970. He was Professor of European
Literature at the University of East Anglia and is the author of
The Emigrants, The Rings of Saturn, Vertigo, Austerlitz, After
Nature, On the Natural History of Destruction, Campo Santo,
Unrecounted and a selection of poetry, Across the Land and the
Water. Jo Catling taught German for a number of years alongside W.
G. Sebald at the University of East Anglia, where she is currently
a senior lecturer in the School of Literature, Drama and Creative
Writing.
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