Quicknation    W.G. Sebald

Images of W.G. Sebald: G Y AOL AV MSN Books of W.G. Sebald: B

(May 18, 1944, Wertach im Allgäu–December 14, 2001, Norfolk, United Kingdom) was a writer and academic. Towards the end of his life he was being cited by many literary critics as one of the greatest living authors, and was tipped as a possible future winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature. He preferred to be called 'Max', from one of his middle names, by family and friends.

table

Sebald grew up in a Bavarian village, one of four children of Rosa and Georg Sebald. His father joined the Reichswehr in 1929 and remained in the Wehrmacht under the Nazis. His father remained a detached figure, a prisoner of war until 1947; a grandfather was the most important male presence in his early years. He was shown images of the Holocaust whilst at school in Oberstdorf and recalled that no one knew how to explain what they had just seen. The Holocaust and post-war Germany loomed large in Sebald's work.

Sebald studied literature at the universities of Freiburg, Germany, Fribourg, Switzerland and Manchester. He became an assistant lecturer at the University of Manchester in 1966 and settled in England permanently in 1970, joining the University of East Anglia. In 1987, he was appointed to a chair of German literature at UEA and, in 1989, became the founding director of the British Centre for Literary Translation. He lived at Wymondham whilst at the UEA.

Sebald died in a car crash in 2001. He was driving together with his daughter, Anna, who survived the crash. He had married Ute in 1967.

Sebald's works are largely concerned with the theme of memory, both personal and collective. They were in particular attempts to reconcile himself with, and deal in literary terms with, the trauma of the Second World War and its effect on the German people. In i he wrote a major essay on the wartime bombing of German cities, and the absence in German writing of any real response. His concern with the Holocaust is expressed in several books delicately tracing his own biographical connections with Jews.

His distinctive and innovative novels were written in German, but are well-known in excellent English translations which he supervised closely. They include i. They are notable for their curious and wide-ranging mixture of fact (or apparent fact), recollection and fiction, often punctuated by indistinct black-and-white photographs. All except i are presented as observations and recollections made by Sebald while travelling around parts of Europe.

Außer Land. Drei Romane und ein Elementargedicht: Die Ausgewanderten, Die Ringe des Saturn, Schwindel. Gefühle, Nach der NaturOn the Natural History of Destruction: With Essays on Alfred Andersch, Jean Amery, and Peter Weiss.