R.I.P. -- W. G. Sebald

Just as his works were gaining wider audiences and he seemed to be hitting a creative stride, German author W.G. Sebald unexpectedly died on December 14, in an automobile accident near his home in England.

Always hard to classify, Sebald's works eschewed traditional novelistic structure -- Sebald and others only hesitantly called them "novels" -- and have been hailed as powerful explorations of history, exile, and memory. His books incorporate elements of travelogues, memoirs, biographies, reportage, and even photo albums (each of his novels are embellished by enigmatic black-and-white photographs).

Despite comparisons to some of the greatest modern writers, including Borges, Nabakov, and Kafka, Sebald's work is marked by its originality. If you care to investigate his unique manner of expression, then try one of these books - the four Sebald works that have been published in English thus far (another is due out next year). Each of them has generated tremendous excitement in the literary community.

Austerlitz
by W.G. Sebald
Sebald's latest effort records a conversation between an unnamed narrator and Jaques Austerlitz, an architectural historian. Upon his retirement, Austerlitz is flooded with memories of his early childhood, when he was one of many Jewish children who escaped Nazi Germany via the Kindertransport, after which a Welsh couple adopted him. He decides to traces his own history, via traveling to London, Prague, and Paris. Here, as in all of his books, Sebald ponders the minutiae of life; the results are thought-provoking, hypnotic, and moving.

The Emigrants
by W.G. Sebald
Sebald's first novel to be translated into English, The Emigrants contains four novellas, each of which tells the story of an exile who left Germany in the 20th century; three of the emigrants are Jewish. Each person traveled the globe, and bore the burden of exile in different, often grim ways. Another montage of fact, fiction, and dated snapshots, The Emigrants has been hailed by authors and critics around the world as a masterpiece -- and bibliophiles are sure to enjoy the brief cameo appearances by Vladimir Nabokov.

Vertigo
by W. G. Sebald
Sebald's first novel (although his third to be published in English) is a phantasmagoric trip through the literary landscape of Europe: He weaves together four narratives that take the reader through Italy, Switzerland, and Bavaria. Along the way, there are guest appearances by Kafka, Stendahl, and Casanova, among other authors. Here, Sebald creates a dizzying, hallucinatory state of vertigo in a work that speaks volumes about the nature of memory and forgetting. It's a bizarre, and truly compelling, ride.

The Rings of Saturn
by W.G. Sebald
A diary of sorts, The Rings of Saturn fictionalizes the author's long walks through his hometown of East Anglia, England -- during which the protagonist contemplated subjects as diverse as colonialism, both world wars, and medieval history. These topics don't appear so much as heady discussions, however, but rather as a series of intertwined stories, often melancholy in nature. Again, literary and historical ghosts crop up, including Thomas Browne, Swinburne, Joseph Conrad, Chateaubriand, Borges, and the Emperor of China, as Sebald poetically enhances our understanding of the passage of time, and again lulls the reader into a sort of dream state with his flowing stream-of-consciousness prose.