The rings of Saturn

Andrew (andrewspink@mastadon.green) reviewed The Rings of Saturn by Winfried Georg Sebald

Review of 'The Rings of Saturn' on 'Goodreads'

4 stars

What an extraordinary book! It is like going for a long.walk with a learned and garrulous friend who tells you all sorts of stories vaguely related, sometimes very vaguely related, to the landscape you are walking through. Every so often there are small passages in different languages and I was glad I was reading it in the ebook version so that I could easily look up the meaning. Reading it as an ebook was also handy for checking if things the garrulous friend relates were actually true. Mostly the unlikely facts are actually confirmed by Wikipedia but then every do often there is something which is just not possible and that makes you doubt everything. The photos also add to sense of it being a real walk (although a disadvantage of the ebook formatting is they are too small, a shame)x but I heard the other day that the route …

Subjects

Sebald, Winfried Georg, 1944- -- Travel -- England

Authors, German -- 20th century -- Biography

England -- Description and travel

Fionnáin reviewed The rings of Saturn by Winfried Georg Sebald

Review of 'The rings of Saturn' on 'Import'

5 stars

The Rings of Saturn is so many things at once. Part travel documentation, part historical research, part novel, part ethereal stream-of-consciousness, and each part is executed superbly. The book ostensibly covers a short period of journey on-foot by Sebald in south-east England as he traces some of the history related to Thomas Browne, but it meanders and gets lost just as often as he does on the moors and plains of that area. The journey it takes us on is sublime. Each page is dripping with descriptions, sudden changes in course, and a type of exploratory and deeply engaged writing that is incomparable. This is my first time reading Sebald; I will be reading a lot more of him in future.