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AusterlitzEditions
Review
As in his previous work, Sebald is concerned here with the themes of exile and identity. The story in this book is that of Jacques Austerlitz, who arrives from Europe just before the Second World War in a ‘kindertransport’. He is taken in by a pair of Welsh Calvinists who, for reasons of their own, tell the Jewish child nothing whatever of his origins. As an adult he becomes an architectural historian of an increasingly introverted disposition as he discovers, and remembers, his origins in Prague and considers his parents’ fate in Theresienstadt. His story is told to the writer in a sequence of fortuitous meetings that occur over many years. Like his other books, ‘Austerlitz’ contains numerous black and white photographs which give an immediacy to the text that goes beyond words. - review by Johnny de Falbe |
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John Sandoe [Books] Ltd |
This amazing book confirms the view (held by many, including myself) that Sebald is the most significant writer to have emerged in the last ten years. It consists of a single paragraph of 414 pages, broken only by 3 or 4 asterisks. Do not fret, however, it has been nicely produced with a larger-than-usual font. More to the point – as Sebald himself said after a reading following this books’s publication – it is not difficult to follow. In his melancholy, lugubrious voice, he declared that he did not see the point of paragraphs for him, never thought about them. He said he believed paragraphs were used by people who wished to avoid the burden of making connections. He himself, however, was at pains to make connections, to make his narrative flow, and he thought that his readers would not disagree. While not altogether accepting his explanation, it is true that this book, despite appearances, is easy to read. It is more overtly a fiction than 
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