The Emigrants
A twentieth-century novel tracing Jewish exile before and after the Holocaust
1st Edition
Published on 30. November 2013
256 pages
978-1-4464-2699-9 (ISBN)
Description
Dr Henry Selwyn, Paul Bereyter, Ambros Adelwarth and Max Ferber are exiled across a shattered Europe.
Set across Europe and America from the late nineteenth century through the aftermath of the Holocaust, The Emigrants reconstructs lives marked by displacement and loss.
Through photographs discovered in drawers, half-remembered conversations and the slow reconstruction of letters and diaries, The Emigrants pieces together lives fractured by exile. Each man carries a private history of displacement, from pre-war Europe through the rise of Nazism and the shadow of the Holocaust, and each story circles loss that cannot be fully recovered. The narrator's careful investigations reveal silences, evasions and the quiet weight of trauma that persists long after physical escape.
At first The Emigrants simply documents the lives of four Jewish emigres in the twentieth century. But gradually, as Sebald's precise, almost dreamlike prose begins to draw their stories, the four narrations merge into one overwhelming evocation of exile and loss.
'I know of no book which conveys more about that complex fate, being a European at the end of European civilization' Susan Sontag
'An unconsoling masterpiece... Exquisitely written and exquisitely translated...a true work of art' Spectator
Set across Europe and America from the late nineteenth century through the aftermath of the Holocaust, The Emigrants reconstructs lives marked by displacement and loss.
Through photographs discovered in drawers, half-remembered conversations and the slow reconstruction of letters and diaries, The Emigrants pieces together lives fractured by exile. Each man carries a private history of displacement, from pre-war Europe through the rise of Nazism and the shadow of the Holocaust, and each story circles loss that cannot be fully recovered. The narrator's careful investigations reveal silences, evasions and the quiet weight of trauma that persists long after physical escape.
At first The Emigrants simply documents the lives of four Jewish emigres in the twentieth century. But gradually, as Sebald's precise, almost dreamlike prose begins to draw their stories, the four narrations merge into one overwhelming evocation of exile and loss.
'I know of no book which conveys more about that complex fate, being a European at the end of European civilization' Susan Sontag
'An unconsoling masterpiece... Exquisitely written and exquisitely translated...a true work of art' Spectator
Reviews / Votes
Strange, beautiful and terribly moving * A.S. Byatt * This deeply moving book shames most writers with its nerve and tact and wonder * Michael Ondaatje * An unconsoling masterpiece...It is exquisitely written and exquisitely translated...a true work of art * Spectator * A spellbinding account of four Jewish exiles. Its restrained and meditative tone has stayed with me all year * Nicholas Shakespeare * A sober delicate account of displacement, and a classic of its kind. Modest and remote, it resurrects older standards of behaviour, making most contemporary writing seem brash and immature. No book has pleased me more this year * Anita Brookner, Spectator * It's like nothing I've ever read...A book of excruciating sobriety and warmth and a magical concreteness of observation...I know of no book which conveys more about that complex fate, being a European at the end of European civilization. I know of few books written in our time but this one which attains the sublime * Susan Sontag, Times Literary Supplement * The writing seems long distilled, intensely pre-mediated and yet utterly fresh. It has an unaffected earnestness, a loner's earnestness * Karl Miller, Times Literary Supplement * One of the most innovative writers of the late 20th century... It's as if the spirit of ruined Europe were speaking through him * Guardian * The writer who above all others transformed the ravaged lands and minds of post-war Europe into a scene of hauntings * Independent *More details
Language
English
Place of publication
London
United Kingdom
Publishing group
Vintage Publishing
Target group
Professional and scholarly
College/higher education
Illustrations
78
File size
3,96 MB
ISBN-13
978-1-4464-2699-9 (9781446426999)
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Schweitzer Classification
Other editions
Additional editions
Persons
W G Sebald (Author)
W. G. Sebald was born in Wertach im Allgaeu, in the Bavarian Alps, in 1944. He studied German language and literature in Freiburg, Switzerland and Manchester. In 1966 he took up a position as an assistant lecturer at the University of Manchester, settling permanently in England in 1970. He was professor of Modern German Literature at the University of East Anglia, and is the author of The Emigrants which won the Berlin Literature Prize, the Literatur Nord Prize and the Johannes Bobrowski Medal, The Rings of Saturn and Austerlitz. W. G. Sebald died in 2001.
Michael Hulse and Simon Rae (Translators)
Michael Hulse teaches poetry at Warwick University and regularly does reading tours in the UK, the US, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and India. He is based in Warwick. Simon Rae is a playwright , novelist and broadcaster (he presented Radio 4's 'Poetry Please' for several years). He lives in Banbury, Oxfordshire. Both Michael Hulse and Simon Rae are published poets and winners of the National Poetry Competition.
W. G. Sebald was born in Wertach im Allgaeu, in the Bavarian Alps, in 1944. He studied German language and literature in Freiburg, Switzerland and Manchester. In 1966 he took up a position as an assistant lecturer at the University of Manchester, settling permanently in England in 1970. He was professor of Modern German Literature at the University of East Anglia, and is the author of The Emigrants which won the Berlin Literature Prize, the Literatur Nord Prize and the Johannes Bobrowski Medal, The Rings of Saturn and Austerlitz. W. G. Sebald died in 2001.
Michael Hulse and Simon Rae (Translators)
Michael Hulse teaches poetry at Warwick University and regularly does reading tours in the UK, the US, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and India. He is based in Warwick. Simon Rae is a playwright , novelist and broadcaster (he presented Radio 4's 'Poetry Please' for several years). He lives in Banbury, Oxfordshire. Both Michael Hulse and Simon Rae are published poets and winners of the National Poetry Competition.
