Austerlitz (Magill’s Literary Annual 1991-2005)
At a glance:
- Author: W. G. Sebald
- First Published: 2001
- Type of Work: Novel
- Time of Work: 1938 to the 1990’s
- Setting: Bala, Wales; London; Paris; Lucerne; Antwerp; and Prague
- Principal Characters: The narrator, Jacques Austerlitz, Emyr, Penrith-Smith, Andre Hilary, Maximilian, Vera Rysanova
- Genres: Long fiction, Psychological fiction
- Subjects: 1950’s, 1960’s, 1970’s, Memory, Traveling or travelers, Twentieth century, 1940’s, Paris, 1930’s, 1980’s, Jews or Jewish life, Adoption or adopted children, London, Orphans or orphanages, 1990’s, Holocaust, Jewish, Time, Switzerland or Swiss people, Quest, Wales or Welsh people, Czechoslovakia or Czechoslovakians, Dopplegangers, Genocide
- Locales: Paris, France, London, England, Antwerp, Belgium, Switzerland, Wales, Prague, Czechoslovakia
The death in an auto accident of W. G. Sebald in December, 2001, brought an abrupt end to a challenging literary career. It was easy to classify Sebald’s The Emigrants (1996), his first novel for American readers, as an example of Holocaust literature. The last of the book’s four stories presented a famous painter, Max Ferber, a German Jew sent out of Nazi Germany as a child to safety in England. The Rings of Saturn (1998) and Vertigo (1999) resist so easy a label. Saturn’s dark intimations included not just Jews but all of Western life and achievement....
[The entire page is 1540 words long]
