Austerlitz - Rilegato

Sebald, W.G.

Rilegato

ISBN 10: 0676974333 ISBN 13: 9780676974331

Casa editrice: Knopf Canada, 2001

Riassunto

From one of the undisputed masters of world literature, a haunting novel of sublime ambition and power about a man whose fragmentary memories of a lost childhood lead him on a quest across Europe in search of his heritage.

Jacques Austerlitz is a survivor – rescued as a child from the Nazi threat. In the summer of 1939 he arrives in Wales to live with a Methodist minister and his wife. As he grows up, they tell him nothing of his origins, and he reaches adulthood with no understanding of where he came from. Late in life, a sudden memory brings him the first glimpse of his origins, launching him on a journey into a family history that has been buried.

The story of Jacques Austerlitz unfolds over the course of a 30-year conversation that takes place in train stations and travellers’ stops across England and Europe. In Jacques Austerlitz, Sebald embodies the universal human search for identity, the struggle to impose coherence on memory, a struggle complicated by the mind’s defences against trauma. Along the way, this novel of many riches dwells magically on a variety of subjects – railway architecture, military fortifications, insects, plants and animals, the constellations, works of art, a small circus and the three cities that loom over the book, London, Paris and Prague – in the service of its astounding vision.

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Recensione:

“Sebald makes exquisite art out of vile history.... he reveals, in matchlessly exact and tender prose, how many secrets still lie interred in the old ground beneath our heedless feet.” -- The Independent

"I have never read a book that provides such a powerful account of the devastation wrought by the dispersal of the Jews from Prague and their treatment by the Nazis.... a literary tour de force." -- The Observer

“[H]is impassioned demand to keep memory alive makes Austerlitz an unforgettable legacy for an extraordinary writer.... [Sebald’s] greatest work.” -- Maclean’s

"A powerful and resonant work of the historical imagination." -- Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times

“[H]ere’s a storyteller who knows his stuff. The only solace at the close of this haunting fiction is that the fallout from the Holocaust that continues to engulf people like Austerlitz can also inspire such a singularly beautiful work of art.” -- Newsweek

“Sebald is the real thing.... [S]ublime.” -- The Globe and Mail

“[A] call to arms in our human struggle against oblivion.” -- The Toronto Star

“[R]emarkable.... Reading a Sebald novel is not so much to escape into an imaginary world as it is to be invited on an excursion through the author's intellectual storehouse of experience and knowledge.” -- Sandra Martin, The Globe and Mail

"A remarkable accomplishment." -- The L.A. Times

“One of the most exciting, and most mysteriously sublime, of contemporary European writers.” — The New Republic

“Is literary greatness still possible? What would a noble literary enterprise look like? One of the few answers available to English-language readers is the work of W. G. Sebald.” — Susan Sontag

“Sebald [is] one of the most astonishing and original voices to emerge in recent years. Hugely intelligent, gifted with a wide-ranging and prodigious memory... Sebald creates literature that penetrates deep into the reader’s unconscious, as only the very greatest books can.” — Jane Urquhart, The Globe and Mail

“W. G. Sebald remains beautifully unclassifiable.... An invitation into his way of seeing is not to be passed up.” — Emma Richler, Ottawa Citizen

In four genre-bending novels published in the last decade, the 57-year-old Sebald has established himself as Europe’s most idio-syncratic author. His fiction comes loaded with essayistic digressions and is generously salted with photographs, newspaper clippings, maps and railroad timetables. There is something of Poe in these books, and Borges and Kafka, which is to say, here’s a storyteller who knows his stuff. The only solace at the close of this haunting fiction is that the fallout from the Holocaust that continues to engulf people like Austerlitz can also inspire such a singularly beautiful work of art. — Malcolm Jones, Newsweek, October 29, 2001

“...the most haunting of German writers....moving, rich, brilliant...” — Richard Eder, New York Times, October 28, 2001

L'autore:

W. G. Sebald was born in Wertach im Allgäu, Germany, in 1944. He studied German language and literature in Freiburg, Switzerland, and Manchester. He taught at the University of East Anglia in Norwich, England, for thirty years, becoming professor of European literature in 1987, and from 1989 to 1994 was the first director of the British Centre for Literary Translation. His previously translated books—The Rings of Saturn, The Emigrants, Vertigo, and Austerlitz—have won a number of international awards, including the National Book Critics Circle Award, the Los Angeles Times Book Award, the Berlin Literature Prize, and the Literatur Nord Prize. He died in December 2001.

Su questa edizione

• Editore: Knopf Canada
• Data di pubblicazione: 2001
• ISBN 10: 0676974333
• ISBN 13: 9780676974331
• Rilegatura: Copertina rigida
• Numero di pagine: 304