Silent Catastrophes

This is a new book. Condition: Brand New.

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

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.

Book details and technical specifications

Format: Hardback
ISBN13: 9780241144190
Published: January 2025

Number of pages: 544
Width: 142 mm
Height: 223 mm
Depth: 45 mm

Publisher: Penguin Books Ltd