- Hardcover: 432 pages
- Publisher: Hamish Hamilton Ltd; First Edition edition (4 Oct 2001)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 0241141257
- ISBN-13: 978-0241141250
- Product Dimensions: 21.6 x 14.4 x 4.4 cm
- Average Customer Review: 3.7 out of 5 stars See all reviews (38 customer reviews)
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Amazon Bestsellers Rank:
29,734 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #22 in Books > Biography > War & Espionage > World War I
- #86 in Books > History > World History > World War II 1939-1945 > Biographies & Memoirs
- #86 in Books > Biography > War & Espionage > World War II
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Product Description
Amazon.co.uk Review
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
Review
'One of the most exciting, and most mysteriously sublime, of contemporary European writers' Guardian
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
22 of 22 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.
43 of 45 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover
I was half way through this wonderful book when I read of Sebald's death in a road accident last weekend. Fortunately for us, it stands as a brilliant culmination of his four 'novels', but also shows us what we have lost.
Austerlitz has been driven to the brink of mental illness by the suppression of early childhood memories and the refusal to hear of anything that has occurred in Europe since the nineteenth century. Following his upbringing in North Wales, his life in London and his travels in Prague we see reality creeping in. Austerlitz slowly discovers himself and in doing so discovers the twentieth century for us.
Part of the pleasure of reading Sebald is the prose - measured, precise and beautifully translated - and the inclusion of photographs that contribute as much to the atmosphere as the text. There is also much of Thomas Bernhard here - the lack of paragraph breaks, the long sentences, the story told by a first person relating a long conversation with a second or third, a main character who has spent his life researching some obscure topic but will never manage to put pen to paper (Bernhard's Concrete and The Lime Works), and a preoccupation with compromised morals. There is perhaps even a nod to Bernhard with the description of the Nazi rally in Vienna's Heldenplatz - the subject of a play by Bernhard.
I was entranced by The Rings Of Saturn but Austerlitz is even better - easily the best book I read this year. That we will not have any more books like this I find unbearable at the moment.
If Austerlitz appeals to you, then do try Bernhard too - The Loser or Cutting Timber would be a good place to start.
Austerlitz has been driven to the brink of mental illness by the suppression of early childhood memories and the refusal to hear of anything that has occurred in Europe since the nineteenth century. Following his upbringing in North Wales, his life in London and his travels in Prague we see reality creeping in. Austerlitz slowly discovers himself and in doing so discovers the twentieth century for us.
Part of the pleasure of reading Sebald is the prose - measured, precise and beautifully translated - and the inclusion of photographs that contribute as much to the atmosphere as the text. There is also much of Thomas Bernhard here - the lack of paragraph breaks, the long sentences, the story told by a first person relating a long conversation with a second or third, a main character who has spent his life researching some obscure topic but will never manage to put pen to paper (Bernhard's Concrete and The Lime Works), and a preoccupation with compromised morals. There is perhaps even a nod to Bernhard with the description of the Nazi rally in Vienna's Heldenplatz - the subject of a play by Bernhard.
I was entranced by The Rings Of Saturn but Austerlitz is even better - easily the best book I read this year. That we will not have any more books like this I find unbearable at the moment.
If Austerlitz appeals to you, then do try Bernhard too - The Loser or Cutting Timber would be a good place to start.
11 of 11 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
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 1 month ago by Bacchus
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 15 months ago by Antenna
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
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
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
Gently atmospheric, moving and thought-provoking
The reviews of this book appear to be quite polarised and it seems that it will appeal to a more thoughtful and meditative reader rather than one looking for a very dramatic or... Read more
Published on 17 Sep 2009 by NILPFERD
Austerlitz
Yes, Sebald's other major works are all beautifully written, profound, and insightful. but they lack narrative force, or propulsion (and in this way are reminiscent of the... Read more
Published on 24 Aug 2009 by P. J. Walker
Four Hundred and Fifteen Pages . . .
. . . but only one paragraph! No speech punctuation even though various characters speak. Reported speech within unpunctuated direct speech and vice-versa, so it's easy to lose... Read more
Published on 21 Jun 2009 by Yellow Duck
Austerlitz - a disappointment
I purchased Austerlitz to read in readiness for a discussion on it at a book circle to which I belong. Read more
Published on 28 April 2009 by J. Carne
Wonderful moments, but frustrating overall
Although at times pretty hard going, and difficult to follow through the constant diversions, distractions and tangents, I found it surprising how much the story kept going, and... Read more
Published on 26 April 2009 by JamieJ
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