Austerlitz

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Winfried Georg Sebald: Austerlitz (2001, Hamish Hamilton)

415 pages

English language

Published Nov. 8, 2001 by Hamish Hamilton.

ISBN:
978-0-241-14125-0
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4 stars (4 reviews)

Austerlitz is a 2001 novel by the German writer W. G. Sebald. It was Sebald's final novel. The book received the National Book Critics Circle Award. In 2019, it was ranked 5th on The Guardian's list of the 100 best books of the 21st century.

13 editions

Review of 'Austerlitz' on 'Goodreads'

3 stars

I hadn't read Sebald before. I came to this novel after reading a review of a recent biography. I see that this book was very moving for a lot of the reviewers, and although the part of the book about the Holocaust is certainly moving, I didn't feel that what the author was trying to do clicked for me. It is a sort of pseudo-history in which someone's appropriated story is fictionalized but also illustrated with a set of found fey photographs. It seemed sometimes that the author must have written the text specifically for the photographs. I'm new to this author and he certainly has a massive reputation, so I might come around to more stars if I cogitate over it - but not today.

Subjects

  • Holocaust survivors -- England -- Fiction.
  • Jews -- England -- Fiction.
  • Architectural historians -- England -- Fiction.
  • Depersonalization -- Fiction.

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