In the summer of 1939, five-year-old Jacques Austerlitz is sent to England on one of the Kindertransports and placed with foster parents in Wales. For reasons of their own, the childless Calvinist couple erase from the boy all knowledge of his identity. Throughout his life Austerlitz is haunted by feelings of otherness, but it is not until retirement that he embarks on a journey to make sense of his curious early memories and explores what happened to him half a century ago.
Austerlitz
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WG Sebald's Austerlitz has something of the fractured narrative and wanderlust of his novels The Emigrants and The Rings of Saturn, and continues to develop their obsession with history, loss and memory--or more precisely in this case, forgetting. In the decade since the original German publication of Vertigo, Sebald has established himself as indisputably one of Europe's most interesting and lauded writers.
In 1967, the narrator bumps into a man in the salle de pas perdus of Antwerp's Central Station. Thus begins a long if intermittent acquaintance, during which he learns the life story of this stranger, retired architectural historian Jacques Austerlitz. Raised as Dafydd Elias by a strict Welsh Calvinist ministry family, it is only at school that Austerlitz learns his true name--and only years later, by a series of chance encounters, that he allows himself to discover the truth of his origins, as a Czech child spirited away from his mother and out of Nazi territory on the Kindertransport. He returns to confront the childhood traumas that have made him feel that "I must have made a mistake, and now I am living the wrong life."
In this writer's hands, Austerlitz's tale of personal emotional repression becomes a metaphor for Europe's smothered past. Sebald wittily explores the tricks of time and space, unearthing Europe as an unconscious palimpsest. Delighting in lists and unfeasibly lengthy descriptions, Sebald can turn anything to poetry--even the alleged health benefits of Marienbad's Auschowitz springs become "a positive verbal coloratura of medical and diagnostic terms" (luckily, all his characters seem to be able to hold forth this way). Indeed, Sebald writes with such preternatural lucidity that even a harrowing account of writer's block ironically becomes a celebration of his own quite clearly unblockable virtuosity.
At heart, though, Austerlitz is a serious indictment of modern Europe's "avoidance system", its repeated patterns of personal and institutional forgetting that, even within Austerlitz's own lifetime, have contrived to obscure, ignore and render irretrievable his past and the source of his pain. And yet, despite the bleakness of that picture, the book ends with its hero--and its readers--committed to trying, at least, to remember. --Alan Stewart --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
Review
"Critics fall over themselves to heap praise upon this brilliant and original writer... there can be no finer introduction." -- Waterstone's Books Quaterly
"It is fiction with the highest ambitions that does not fail to move and satisfy." -- The Observer
"Sebald’s is a troubled voice to which anyone with a serious interest in fiction should pay attention." -- Daily Telegraph Summer Reading
"This dense, dark, prize-winning novel makes rewarding reading." -- Daily Mail
"It is fiction with the highest ambitions that does not fail to move and satisfy." -- The Observer
"Sebald’s is a troubled voice to which anyone with a serious interest in fiction should pay attention." -- Daily Telegraph Summer Reading
"This dense, dark, prize-winning novel makes rewarding reading." -- Daily Mail
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
28 of 28 people found the following review helpful
By Cardew Robinson
TOP 500 REVIEWER
Format:Paperback
Starved since the author's death in 2001 of any new substantial 'product' to sell, you could accuse Penguin books of cashing in by reprinting "Austerlitz" in a new 'tenth anniversary' edition. Certainly those familiar with the work should think twice about buying this, since the text is the same. However, Wood's introduction is very good: long on insight and common sense interpretation, and aimed at our good friend General Reader rather than just at students and lecturers. This renders the intro more accessible to all, and in fact it's useful not only as an introduction to this book, but also Sebald's whole body of work, so that overall I'd recommend this book as a good place to start with Sebald for those new to his work.
Sebald said that one of his main concerns as a writer was with Germany and its place in Europe and European culture. Of course this also meant that the crimes committed by the Nazis cast their shadow over his work, whether he alluded to them directly or not. By the time of "Austerlitz", he finally engaged with the subject of the persecution of the Jews, by making his eponymous main character into someone touched directly that persecution. The main thread of this story concerns Austerlitz slowly piecing together the facts about his early life as a little jewish boy sent to Great Britain to escape the horrors of Nazi persecution.
This is not an easy book, although its plot is fairly simple and engaging. Some complain about Sebald's style, and certainly you have to bear with him, for a lot of the sentences are quite long (I don't mean to patronise anyone in saying this. It's just that tight, short syntax is so much the norm these days, from mainstream writing, to websites and daily papers, so that longer, snaking sentences take a while to get used to again). He's also a very allusive writer, making reference to a myriad different cultural and historical facts and points of interest.
However, the rewards are there if you put the effort in. "Austerlitz", unfortunately, became something as a memorial to Sebald, since he died shortly after its publication. In it's own way, however, the book also stands as a memorial to the suffering of so many. For once the hype was justified: Sebald is one of the great european writers, and this is a seminal work in our shared cultural heritage. This edition and Wood's intro help to put all this into context.
Sebald said that one of his main concerns as a writer was with Germany and its place in Europe and European culture. Of course this also meant that the crimes committed by the Nazis cast their shadow over his work, whether he alluded to them directly or not. By the time of "Austerlitz", he finally engaged with the subject of the persecution of the Jews, by making his eponymous main character into someone touched directly that persecution. The main thread of this story concerns Austerlitz slowly piecing together the facts about his early life as a little jewish boy sent to Great Britain to escape the horrors of Nazi persecution.
This is not an easy book, although its plot is fairly simple and engaging. Some complain about Sebald's style, and certainly you have to bear with him, for a lot of the sentences are quite long (I don't mean to patronise anyone in saying this. It's just that tight, short syntax is so much the norm these days, from mainstream writing, to websites and daily papers, so that longer, snaking sentences take a while to get used to again). He's also a very allusive writer, making reference to a myriad different cultural and historical facts and points of interest.
However, the rewards are there if you put the effort in. "Austerlitz", unfortunately, became something as a memorial to Sebald, since he died shortly after its publication. In it's own way, however, the book also stands as a memorial to the suffering of so many. For once the hype was justified: Sebald is one of the great european writers, and this is a seminal work in our shared cultural heritage. This edition and Wood's intro help to put all this into context.
26 of 26 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover
Sebald tells a fictional story of the adult Austerlitz's search for his past, from his birth in Prague, through his early childhood, leading to his passage to Britain just before WW2 on one of the last trains sending young children to safety.
Sebald adopts a deliberately meandering style, the narrative interspersed with thoughts about science, architecture, 20th century history. The book is introspective and dense, drawing the reader into a melancholic frame of mind, around thoughts of holocaust, persecution and brutality.
Among his many descriptions of European architecture he writes about the Palace of Justice in Brussels, ". . . a kind of wonder, which is in itself a dawning horror, for somehow we know by instinct that outsize buildings cast the shadow of their own destruction before them, and are designed from the first with an eye to their later existence as ruins"...
In reading a book like this, it is necessary to ask the question what is it about? In my view, Sebald seeks to show his readers that the consciousness of the awful horrors of the last century, effectively put a stop to any lightness or levity in the present. Our bleakest expectations of human behaviour colour our experience today so that all is shot through with memories of the dreadful things that happened a mere 60 years ago (and continue to recur to this day).
Not a happy read, but probably an "important" book and having read Austerlitz a week or so ago I find my thoughts returning to it, and wanting to revisit it.
Incidentally, the book is beautifully produced, being illustrated with a collection of black and white photographs, some of which I assume Sebald shot himself, and others which I imagine are "found" objects from his collection. The photos are incredibly melancholic, presenting an impression of extreme lonliness and human isolation. The book itself is beautifully presented, printed on rich paper with an elegant typescript and a high quality binding. I suspect it will be a collectors item in years to come.
14 of 14 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
I came across Sebald's books by chance via The Rings of Saturn. At first I had no idea what I was reading. To me it seemed a new genre, not just a novel. Austerlitz follows a smiliar pattern. Sebald seems to combine travelogue, dream, history, reminiscence, psychology and even illustrates his pages with long -lost photographs. It is like stumbling into a drawer and finding the faded, collected remnants of someone's consciousness. The non-stop non-paragraphed writing resembles a kind of manic dream state. I hope this doesn't sound off-putting and perhaps you have to read it to understand. Underlying his writing is a luminous humanity. We follow Austerlitz as he grapples with his anxiety and distress, his "sense of rejection and annihilation" which links his story to the wider currents of Europe's history of denial and admission. I don't recommend Sebald: he deserves, or rather requires, to be read. Words like dreamlike and haunting don't do this justice. He truly pushes writing into a new, enigmatic territory.
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Most Recent Customer Reviews
3.0 out of 5 stars
Hmm
Hmm. This was recommended to me by a friend whose opinion I trust. I got about 100 pages in and gave up. Then my book club decided to read it, so I ploughed through to the end. Read more
Published 26 days ago by Frootle
4.0 out of 5 stars
Strangely Haunting
I found this book to be one of those which you read thinking, "Who on earth thought this would grip the reading public? Read more
Published 2 months ago by Addictive Reader
5.0 out of 5 stars
A lost Childhood
A fascinating book from a wonderful writer. It's quite unlike any other book I can think of, discursive, rambling even, but held together by Sebald's inquiring and empathetic... Read more
Published 4 months ago by Pedro
5.0 out of 5 stars
Man and boy reunited
Most of the time you can discount cover hype on books as over-excitable PR guff but when you read here about "genius", a "Joyce for the 21st century" and "literary greatness" then,... Read more
Published 7 months ago by Mike Collins
5.0 out of 5 stars
Simply sublime
Many people have used words such as 'haunting', 'melancholic', 'beautiful' and 'mesmerising' when describing Sebald's work and, in particular, this novel. They are all spot on. Read more
Published 10 months ago by D. P. McGowan
5.0 out of 5 stars
Beautifully imaginative novel
I was given this book to read by a friend of mine after I told him about Martin Amis' Time's Arrow, in which we see the backwards biography of an American doctor who turned out to... Read more
Published 12 months ago by Bacchus
4.0 out of 5 stars
Impressive translation of memorable and insightful river of prose
I would not have thought of reading a book with no paragraphs and few full stops if I had not been intrigued to understand what made "Austerlitz" so talked about when it was... Read more
Published on 11 Mar 2011 by Antenna
5.0 out of 5 stars
You won't have read anything quite like this before
I have just finished reading this book and have been completely stunned at how powerful and moving it is. Read more
Published on 9 Mar 2010 by doppelganger
4.0 out of 5 stars
Austerlitz by W G Sebald
This is a very rich and haunting novel exploring one man's search for his identity. The book deals with the effects of the kinder transport during the Second World War, through the... Read more
Published on 24 Dec 2009 by Book Worm
4.0 out of 5 stars
prose poem
The unreality of the action of Austerlitz - several meetings between two men, giving rise to unexplained trust, which prompts a series of increasingly revealing monologues by one... Read more
Published on 14 Oct 2009 by William Roberts
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