Winfried Georg Sebald, maestro di uno stile avvolgente e innovativo, ha lasciato un'impronta indelebile nella letteratura di lingua tedesca dopo Thomas Bernhard. Pochi mesi prima della sua tragica scomparsa nel 2001, ha pubblicato un romanzo che ha suscitato grande attenzione a livello internazionale. Il protagonista, Jacques Austerlitz, è un professore di storia dell'architettura che studia edifici carichi di significati simbolici, come stazioni ferroviarie e penitenziari, che nel XIX secolo assumevano forme visionarie. Austerlitz, alto e dinoccolato con un vecchio zaino, vive in un appartamento spoglio a Londra, privo di affetti e amicizie. La sua vasta conoscenza cela un vuoto interiore: non sa chi sia e ha a lungo evitato di scoprirlo. Intraprende un viaggio alla ricerca delle proprie origini, scoprendo di essere arrivato a Londra durante la guerra con un convoglio di bambini, mentre i suoi genitori venivano deportati. Attraverso luoghi e volti, emerge un passato lacerante, che Austerlitz ha sempre portato dentro di sé come un insieme di negativi non sviluppati. Questo percorso di ricerca, intriso di angoscia, racchiude la sapienza evocativa di Sebald.
W. G. Sebald Libri







The first sustained interrogation of travel in Sebald's literary and essayistic work, employing multivalent and new critical perspectives.
The Rings of Saturn
- 296pagine
- 11 ore di lettura
A fictional account of a walking tour of the English countryside, moving through space and time in a dream-like mode.
At first, The Emigrants appears simply to document the lives of four Jewish emigres in the 20th 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 losss.
Vertigo
- 263pagine
- 10 ore di lettura
At moments when reality shows itself to be unstable or uncanny, we experience a form of vertigo. W.G. Sebald explores this theme through four stories and four journeys - the journeys of Stendhal, Kafka, and twice of the unnamed narrator.
In the last years of the Second World War, a million tonnes of bombs were dropped by the Allies on 131 German towns and cities. 600,000 civilians died, seven and a half million Germans were left homeless. W.G. Sebald's lucid but harrowing essays explore the consequences for the German people of the mass destruction of their cities.
Across the Land and the Water
Across the Land and the Water: Selected Poems, 1964-2001
- 192pagine
- 7 ore di lettura
Exploring themes of nature, history, and memory, this collection showcases nearly one hundred poems by W. G. Sebald, highlighting his literary mastery. Spanning from his student years in the sixties to works completed before his death in 2001, the poems, many published in English for the first time, reflect Sebald's unique voice and profound insights. Translated by Iain Galbraith, this volume promises to be a significant contribution to Sebald's already esteemed oeuvre, resonating with readers familiar with his prose.
The Rings Of Saturn : Vintage Voyages
- 320pagine
- 12 ore di lettura
Vintage Voyages: A world of journeys, from the tallest mountains to the depths of the mind 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.
The book presents a detailed catalogue of photographic materials, including negatives, prints, and slides, from the archives of W. G. Sebald, who passed away in 2001. It features a wealth of illustrations alongside contextual interviews, quotations, and essays that enrich the understanding of Sebald's work and legacy. This comprehensive resource not only documents the visual elements left behind but also explores their significance within Sebald's broader artistic and literary contributions.
Pensive images
- 183pagine
- 7 ore di lettura
Inspired by the work of the German writer W. G. Sebald, the exhibition L’Image-papillon (The Butterfly Image) addresses the complex relations that link image and memory. It gathers together sixteen artists whose work, like Sebald’s, explores the realms of memory and history through the concepts of experience and overlapping temporalities. Borrowing its title from a recent essay on Sebald’s Work by the writer and literary researcher Muriel Pic.

