Silent catastrophes

W. G. Sebald

£25.00

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‘Silent Catastrophes’ encompasses two major books of literary criticism, ‘Describing Disaster’ (1985) and ‘Strange Homeland’ (1991). These collections of essays examine the great German writers of modernity, including Franz Kafka, Joseph Roth, Elias Canetti and Thomas Bernheard, who were among Sebald’s most important influences as a writer.

ISBN: 9780241144190 Category:

Description

‘We have become suspicious, rightly, of claims for literary greatness, but in Sebald’s case the claim was triumphantly justified. He was, he is, the real thing’ John Banville, Guardian

From acclaimed critic, novelist and academic W. G. Sebald, author of Austerlitz and The Rings of Saturn, a collection of essay on the Austrian writers who meant so much to him – appearing for the first time in English

As a German in self-chosen exile from his country of birth, Sebald found a particular affinity with these writers from a neighbouring nation. The traumatic evolution of Austria from vast empire to diminutive Alpine republic, followed by its annexation by Germany, meant that concepts such as ‘home/land’, ‘borderland’ and ‘exile’ occupy a prominent role in its literature, just as they would in Sebald’s own.

Through a series of remarkable close readings of texts by Bernhard, Stifter, Kafka, Handke, Roth and more, Sebald charts both the pathologies which so often drove their work and the seismic historical forces which shaped them. This sequence of essays will be a revelation to Sebald’s English-language readers, tracing as they do so many of the themes which animate his own literary writings, to which these essays form a kind of prelude.

‘A writer whose life and work has become a wonderful vindication of literary culture in all its subtle and entrancing complexity’ Guardian

‘Sebald was probably the greatest intellect and voice of the late twentieth century’ Antony Beevor, The Times

Additional information

Weight 0.4 kg
Dimensions 22.2 × 13.8 × 2.5 cm
Author

Publisher

Imprint

Cover

Hardback

Pages

240

Language

English

Edition
Dewey

830.9112 (edition:23)

Readership

General – Trade / Code: K

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