Name: The Emigrants
Rating: 4 (3 reviews)

Winfried Georg Sebald

Published to enormous critical acclaim in the U.S. and sold out immediately in its first hardcover edition, THE EMIGRANTS appears to be straightforward biography of four Germans in exile. But author W.G. Sebald has wrought "one of the best novels to appear since WWII" (REVIEW OF CONTEMPORARY FICTION) and three times chosen as the1996 International Book of the Year. Illustrated throughout with enigmatic photographs.

The Emigrants

Four narratives weave history and fiction together as refugees from the Holocaust remember their experiences

jess

W. G. Sebald

A masterwork of W. G. Sebald, now with a gorgeous new cover by the famed designer Peter Mendelsund The four long narratives in The Emigrants appear at first to be the straightforward biographies of four Germans in exile. Sebald reconstructs the lives of a painter, a doctor, an elementary-school teacher, and Great Uncle Ambrose. Following (literally) in their footsteps, the narrator retraces routes of exile which lead from Lithuania to London, from Munich to Manchester, from the South German provinces to Switzerland, France, New York, Constantinople, and Jerusalem. Along with memories, documents, and diaries of the Holocaust, he collects photographs—the enigmatic snapshots which stud The Emigrants and bring to mind family photo albums. Sebald combines precise documentary with fictional motifs, and as he puts the question to realism, the four stories merge into one unfathomable requiem.

The Emigrants

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