Austerlitz
by W. G. Sebald 
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"Austerlitz is the story of a man's search for the answer to his life's central riddle. A small child when he comes to England on a Kindertransport in the summer of 1939, Jacques Austerlitz is told nothing of his real family by the Welsh Methodist minister and his wife who raise him. When he is a much older man, fleeting memories return to him, and obeying an instinct he only dimly understands, Austerlitz follows their trail back to the world he left behind a half century before. There, show more faced with the void at the heart of twentieth-century Europe, he struggles to rescue his heritage from oblivion."--P. [2] of cover. show lessTags
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This is the second time I’ve read this novel; the first time was soon after its publication in rh U.S. The book haunted me for reasons I couldn’t articulate. So, I thought it would be a good choice for my book club under the theme of “Memory." It proved to be the most controversial book in my three years of moderating this group.
The unnamed narrator is a man without a country, wandering through Europe studying architecture. In a railway station, he makes an acquaintance with a man who introduces himself as Austerlitz.
Sebald does away with plot, characterization, dialogue, and events leading to other events. What we get is the unmediated expression of a pure and seemingly disembodied voice.
Austerlitz is on a quest to find out who show more he is. What he recounts to the narrator is a reconstructive odyssey in search of himself. The two men encounter each other, seemingly by coincidence, again and again in their respective travels, always discussing architecture and history, but sharing nothing of their personal lives until 1996 when their conversation finally turns to Austerlitz’s life history.
The incredible power of this book is how Sebald tells the story and layers the subtext to a point that it requires re-reading with intense attention to every detail. Sebald combats the erasure of history on the collective level as well as the individual. What the Nazis take from Austerlitz is not his life or property but his essential personhood. The traumatic effects of separation are not felt by Austerlitz until the distractions of study and career are cleared away, exposing the emptiness of his disconnected, dislocated existence.
The photographs, unannotated throughout, are part of what makes this novel so powerful and haunting, perhaps because photographs are so evocative and unaffected by the passage of time—except for the fading. The photos give us the impression of a memoir, but some of them have no connection to the prose, yet we, as the reader, are always looking for the pattern. The Nocturama and its accompanying photos of the monkey, the owl, Wittgenstein, and another man set the tone for the conceit of fake realities, which include the false reality of Austerlitz’s own childhood, the horrific distortion of reality by the Nazis, and the false universe of the Holocaust. Sebald says, “This recourse to peripherality (the photographs) arises partly as a narrative strategy to cope with the inherent unrepresentability of that which occurred in the Nazi concentration camps.”
Central to understanding this novel is the reader's understanding that Sebald is German but not Jewish. He is the narrator; he is not Austerlitz. He writes as he does to cope with the “conspiracy of silence” that surrounded him growing up in Germany. His father worked in the Nazi machine. Sebald’s conviction: “This is not so much a way of understanding the Holocaust, so much as it is a way of making us think about how we can’t understand the Holocaust.” This book is a combination of memoir, fiction, travelogue, history, and biography. show less
The unnamed narrator is a man without a country, wandering through Europe studying architecture. In a railway station, he makes an acquaintance with a man who introduces himself as Austerlitz.
Sebald does away with plot, characterization, dialogue, and events leading to other events. What we get is the unmediated expression of a pure and seemingly disembodied voice.
Austerlitz is on a quest to find out who show more he is. What he recounts to the narrator is a reconstructive odyssey in search of himself. The two men encounter each other, seemingly by coincidence, again and again in their respective travels, always discussing architecture and history, but sharing nothing of their personal lives until 1996 when their conversation finally turns to Austerlitz’s life history.
The incredible power of this book is how Sebald tells the story and layers the subtext to a point that it requires re-reading with intense attention to every detail. Sebald combats the erasure of history on the collective level as well as the individual. What the Nazis take from Austerlitz is not his life or property but his essential personhood. The traumatic effects of separation are not felt by Austerlitz until the distractions of study and career are cleared away, exposing the emptiness of his disconnected, dislocated existence.
The photographs, unannotated throughout, are part of what makes this novel so powerful and haunting, perhaps because photographs are so evocative and unaffected by the passage of time—except for the fading. The photos give us the impression of a memoir, but some of them have no connection to the prose, yet we, as the reader, are always looking for the pattern. The Nocturama and its accompanying photos of the monkey, the owl, Wittgenstein, and another man set the tone for the conceit of fake realities, which include the false reality of Austerlitz’s own childhood, the horrific distortion of reality by the Nazis, and the false universe of the Holocaust. Sebald says, “This recourse to peripherality (the photographs) arises partly as a narrative strategy to cope with the inherent unrepresentability of that which occurred in the Nazi concentration camps.”
Central to understanding this novel is the reader's understanding that Sebald is German but not Jewish. He is the narrator; he is not Austerlitz. He writes as he does to cope with the “conspiracy of silence” that surrounded him growing up in Germany. His father worked in the Nazi machine. Sebald’s conviction: “This is not so much a way of understanding the Holocaust, so much as it is a way of making us think about how we can’t understand the Holocaust.” This book is a combination of memoir, fiction, travelogue, history, and biography. show less
In 1967, our unnamed narrator meets Jacques Austerlitz for the first time at Antwerp Central Station where they share a discussion on the finer points of the architectural structure and historical significance of the same. Austerlitz is a lecturer of art history at a college in London with a passionate interest in the architectural history of heritage sites and buildings which is made more obvious through the numerous lengthy and detailed descriptions of the buildings and places visited throughout the narrative. Over the next thirty years they continue to meet irregularly in different locations throughout Europe and Austerlitz shares fragments of the story of his life and background with our narrator.
In 1939, four-year-old Jacque show more Austerlitz arrived in Britain on kindertransport from Czechoslovakia and was taken in by Calvinist preacher and former missionary, Emyr Elias and his wife who lived in a manse in Bala, Wales. He has almost no memories of his life before that and is only made aware of this part of his origin in 1949 by the headmaster of the private school near Oswestry he had been attending since 1946. He is told that his real name is Jacques Austerlitz and not Dafydd Elias, the name given to him by his foster parents. Unfortunately, his foster parents pass on before he can garner any further details from them.
“No one can explain exactly what happens within us when the doors behind which our childhood terrors lurk are flung open.”
Jacques finds support and companionship in André Hilary , teacher of history at his school who later assists in his naturalization process and a younger student, Gerald Fitzpatrick , their friendship lasting the duration of Gerald’s lifetime till his untimely death many years later. He holds fond memories of his many visits to the Andromeda Lodge in Barmouth with Gerald where Gerald’s naturalist Uncle and Grand-uncle fuel his fascination with landscapes and nocturnal insects and birds, moths in particular.
“Newton really thought that time was a river like the Thames, then where is its source and into what sea does it finally flow? Every river, as we know, must have banks on both sides, so where, seen in those terms, where are the banks of time? What would be this river’s qualities, qualities perhaps corresponding to those of water, which is fluid, rather heavy, and translucent? In what way do objects immersed in time differ from those left untouched by it?”
Much of the prose is dedicated to our protagonist Austerlitz’s fascination with and descriptions of old buildings, railway stations and heritage sites. Throughout the narrative, the author gives subtle hints to the protagonist’s search for links to his past as he describes the history of the various places and buildings he visits in Europe. When he finds an unused waiting room in Liverpool Station he experiences a vivid flash of memory of a younger version himself in that waiting room with his rucksack (he is seen to carry a rucksack with him on all his travels) and his foster parents receiving him at the station. When he hears a radio broadcast about children brought to Britain via kindertransport he starts piecing his family history together. His search leads him to Prague where he finds Vera, who had been his nanny while a student at Prague University and was also his mother’s friend and neighbor. Speaking to Vera, he starts to recollect fragmented memories of his childhood, the adjoining area and the language. Vera informs him that his father, Maximilian Aychenwald, had left for Paris just before the Nazi occupation of Prague preceding his family who was to join him later but was never heard from again. His mother, Agata, a singer and actress from an affluent family had stayed on after he was sent to Britain only to have all her assets confiscated and herself transported with others to Theresienstadt. The narrative progresses with Austerlitz’s travels and research into the fate of his parents and the toll of his discoveries on his mental and physical well-being as is shared with the narrator.
“We take almost all the decisive steps in our lives as a result of slight inner adjustments of which we are barely conscious.”
Austerlitz by W.G. Sebald is not an easy book to review. To be honest, I find reviewing the book more complicated than it was to read. At the center of the novel is the Holocaust and Jacques Austerlitz , displaced from his family in an effort to save him from a far worse fate. Combining fact and fiction, the author, instead of going into graphic detail about the horrors of the death camps and the plight of the detainess , discusses the injustices of that period and the impact of the same in post war Europe , but in a more restrained tone. Life in the ghettos and camps , looting of possessions, displacement of families and the ultimate fate of those sent to locations further “east” are alluded to but in connection to Jacque Austerlitz’s story and his research into existing records and documentation that would give him more information on his parents’ respective fates, which takes place almost half a century after the events. Particularly poignant was his discovery of an abridged version of a Nazi propaganda film on the Theresienstadt ghetto to which his mother had been sent and his remastering of it to a fourth of its original speed in which he searches for a glimpse of his mother of whom he has faint recollection. Austerlitz is a deep, meditative and thought-provoking novel about a man searching for his true identity and his exploration of past events of which he has but a fleeting memory. We bear witness to the protagonist’s efforts in finding a sense of belongingness in a world that he observes and interprets but more often than not feels detached from.
The narrative progresses at a slow pace, at times excruciatingly slow, with a deep melancholic tone that is reinforced by old black and white photographs of landscapes, ruins, architecture and much more interspersed throughout the prose. The passages are long and the complex sentences are often hard to follow. I did have to go back and reread parts of the narrative more than once. The longest sentence spanning roughly eight pages is that in which the protagonist shares his description of , and observations on, his visit to Theresienstadt. Brilliant and beautiful in its complexity, Austerlitz, the novel, is an immersive experience that is well worth the time invested. show less
In 1939, four-year-old Jacque show more Austerlitz arrived in Britain on kindertransport from Czechoslovakia and was taken in by Calvinist preacher and former missionary, Emyr Elias and his wife who lived in a manse in Bala, Wales. He has almost no memories of his life before that and is only made aware of this part of his origin in 1949 by the headmaster of the private school near Oswestry he had been attending since 1946. He is told that his real name is Jacques Austerlitz and not Dafydd Elias, the name given to him by his foster parents. Unfortunately, his foster parents pass on before he can garner any further details from them.
“No one can explain exactly what happens within us when the doors behind which our childhood terrors lurk are flung open.”
Jacques finds support and companionship in André Hilary , teacher of history at his school who later assists in his naturalization process and a younger student, Gerald Fitzpatrick , their friendship lasting the duration of Gerald’s lifetime till his untimely death many years later. He holds fond memories of his many visits to the Andromeda Lodge in Barmouth with Gerald where Gerald’s naturalist Uncle and Grand-uncle fuel his fascination with landscapes and nocturnal insects and birds, moths in particular.
“Newton really thought that time was a river like the Thames, then where is its source and into what sea does it finally flow? Every river, as we know, must have banks on both sides, so where, seen in those terms, where are the banks of time? What would be this river’s qualities, qualities perhaps corresponding to those of water, which is fluid, rather heavy, and translucent? In what way do objects immersed in time differ from those left untouched by it?”
Much of the prose is dedicated to our protagonist Austerlitz’s fascination with and descriptions of old buildings, railway stations and heritage sites. Throughout the narrative, the author gives subtle hints to the protagonist’s search for links to his past as he describes the history of the various places and buildings he visits in Europe. When he finds an unused waiting room in Liverpool Station he experiences a vivid flash of memory of a younger version himself in that waiting room with his rucksack (he is seen to carry a rucksack with him on all his travels) and his foster parents receiving him at the station. When he hears a radio broadcast about children brought to Britain via kindertransport he starts piecing his family history together. His search leads him to Prague where he finds Vera, who had been his nanny while a student at Prague University and was also his mother’s friend and neighbor. Speaking to Vera, he starts to recollect fragmented memories of his childhood, the adjoining area and the language. Vera informs him that his father, Maximilian Aychenwald, had left for Paris just before the Nazi occupation of Prague preceding his family who was to join him later but was never heard from again. His mother, Agata, a singer and actress from an affluent family had stayed on after he was sent to Britain only to have all her assets confiscated and herself transported with others to Theresienstadt. The narrative progresses with Austerlitz’s travels and research into the fate of his parents and the toll of his discoveries on his mental and physical well-being as is shared with the narrator.
“We take almost all the decisive steps in our lives as a result of slight inner adjustments of which we are barely conscious.”
Austerlitz by W.G. Sebald is not an easy book to review. To be honest, I find reviewing the book more complicated than it was to read. At the center of the novel is the Holocaust and Jacques Austerlitz , displaced from his family in an effort to save him from a far worse fate. Combining fact and fiction, the author, instead of going into graphic detail about the horrors of the death camps and the plight of the detainess , discusses the injustices of that period and the impact of the same in post war Europe , but in a more restrained tone. Life in the ghettos and camps , looting of possessions, displacement of families and the ultimate fate of those sent to locations further “east” are alluded to but in connection to Jacque Austerlitz’s story and his research into existing records and documentation that would give him more information on his parents’ respective fates, which takes place almost half a century after the events. Particularly poignant was his discovery of an abridged version of a Nazi propaganda film on the Theresienstadt ghetto to which his mother had been sent and his remastering of it to a fourth of its original speed in which he searches for a glimpse of his mother of whom he has faint recollection. Austerlitz is a deep, meditative and thought-provoking novel about a man searching for his true identity and his exploration of past events of which he has but a fleeting memory. We bear witness to the protagonist’s efforts in finding a sense of belongingness in a world that he observes and interprets but more often than not feels detached from.
The narrative progresses at a slow pace, at times excruciatingly slow, with a deep melancholic tone that is reinforced by old black and white photographs of landscapes, ruins, architecture and much more interspersed throughout the prose. The passages are long and the complex sentences are often hard to follow. I did have to go back and reread parts of the narrative more than once. The longest sentence spanning roughly eight pages is that in which the protagonist shares his description of , and observations on, his visit to Theresienstadt. Brilliant and beautiful in its complexity, Austerlitz, the novel, is an immersive experience that is well worth the time invested. show less
Jacques Austerlitz is trying to regain his past in order to find out who he really is. As one of the countless innocent victims of the atrocities associated with World War II, the five-year old Austerlitz was separated from his Czech-born Jewish parents, who put him on a kindertransport to Great Britain in order to save his life. Raised by Welsh foster parents, he lives a fairly ordinary early existence with no apparent memories of (or interest in) his heritage. Only after a mid-life nervous breakdown does Austerlitz seek to recover as much information about his parents and their divergent fates as possible. However, given that this quest begins decades after those fates were sealed, Austerlitz is left to piece together what information show more he can through visits to research archives, historical sites, and conversations with elderly survivors who were first-hand observers of the horrific events surrounding the Holocaust.
Ultimately, Austerlitz is a book that explores how we remember the people, places, and things that give us our identities but are gradually receding into the past. The protagonist’s journey serves as a perfect metaphor for how, as time passes and eye witnesses to any particular occurrence pass on, those memories must be reconstructed from the libraries, museums, and written and media records where they reside. However, how accurate and complete are those “gatekeepers” of our shared histories ever able to be? That question becomes particularly poignant with regard to what occurred in Europe during the 1930s and 1940s since, more than 70 years later, so few people who lived those experiences are still around today to bear witness directly.
As compelling as I found the theme of Austerlitz to be, I actually had a somewhat conflicted reaction to the novel itself. I admire the author’s sense of invention in how the tale is told; Sebald uses an almost stream-of-consciousness style that effectively combines the fictional and historical elements of the story. Further, some of the prose is absolutely stunning in its beauty. In contrast, though, there were some elements of the book’s structure that struck me as awkward: the use of the unnamed narrator created an unnecessary distraction in how many of the sentences had to be phrased, the paucity of paragraphs made it difficult to maintain focus, and the use of so many photographs became a bit of an indulgence as considerable effort was sometimes given to describing a picture that was otherwise irrelevant to the story. So, on balance, while I can certainly recommend this book for the important ideas it develops, that is an endorsement that must unfortunately come with some reservations. show less
Ultimately, Austerlitz is a book that explores how we remember the people, places, and things that give us our identities but are gradually receding into the past. The protagonist’s journey serves as a perfect metaphor for how, as time passes and eye witnesses to any particular occurrence pass on, those memories must be reconstructed from the libraries, museums, and written and media records where they reside. However, how accurate and complete are those “gatekeepers” of our shared histories ever able to be? That question becomes particularly poignant with regard to what occurred in Europe during the 1930s and 1940s since, more than 70 years later, so few people who lived those experiences are still around today to bear witness directly.
As compelling as I found the theme of Austerlitz to be, I actually had a somewhat conflicted reaction to the novel itself. I admire the author’s sense of invention in how the tale is told; Sebald uses an almost stream-of-consciousness style that effectively combines the fictional and historical elements of the story. Further, some of the prose is absolutely stunning in its beauty. In contrast, though, there were some elements of the book’s structure that struck me as awkward: the use of the unnamed narrator created an unnecessary distraction in how many of the sentences had to be phrased, the paucity of paragraphs made it difficult to maintain focus, and the use of so many photographs became a bit of an indulgence as considerable effort was sometimes given to describing a picture that was otherwise irrelevant to the story. So, on balance, while I can certainly recommend this book for the important ideas it develops, that is an endorsement that must unfortunately come with some reservations. show less
Sebald's latest novel, Austerlitz, (3) examines the corrosive effects of history's suppression on a more intimate level. Jacques Austerlitz has been haunted for decades by a past that had been erased just as effectively as modern Germany's. In 1939, at the age of four, he was sent on a Kindertransport from Prague to England. There he was adopted by a dour Welsh Calvinist minister and his wife, and renamed Dafydd Elias. He did not learn of his true name until he was fifteen, by which time his adoptive mother was dead and the minister, unable to cope without her, institutionalized. All the traces of his origins seemed to have vanished, until, in his late fifties, he overhears a radio interview of two women who were on a similar transport. show more The few memories their stories awaken offer him a crucial link in unearthing his family's fate.
In the novel a nameless--but familiarly Sebaldian--narrator recounts Austerlitz's odyssey into this past, which, once the trails he had pursued as a teenager proved dead-ends, he had strenuously avoided. Despite feelings of "wrenching inside [him], a kind of heartache which" he later realized, "was caused by the vortex of past time" he engaged in a constant "self-censorship of the mind" refusing to acknowledge anything that related to his personal past. "As far as I was concerned, the world ended in the late nineteenth century, I dared go no further than that" Thus, Austerlitz, almost inconceivably, as he himself admits, reached middle-age, a respected lecturer in a London institute of art history, having spent decades compiling his investigations into the history of bourgeois architecture and civilization, knowing next to nothing about "the conquest of Europe by the Germans and the slave state they set up" He eventually, painstakingly, reconstructs his parents' final years, up to his mother's deportation to Theresienstadt in 1944 and his father's internment in 1942 in the French camp of Gurs.
In Austerlitz, Sebald covers much the same intellectual territory as in his earlier novels: an anonymous, neurasthenic narrator who shares many biographical details with the author serves as a foil to reflect, with elaborate asides, the lives of history's victims. Yet, with its cohesive story line, Austerlitz is the least obtrusively constructed and the most emotionally powerful of his four novels. Austerlitz himself is a complex and convincing character, and less of a pawn in the illuminating, but highly cerebral literary chess games of Sebald's earlier fiction.
The fascinating digressions in Austerlitz serve, within the more cohesive context of this book, more effectively as metaphors for the human condition than do his earlier fictional diversions. The narrator expounds, for example, theories of fortification from the Middle Ages to the twentieth century, the increasing complexity of which culminated in the star-shaped fortresses of Neuf-Brisach and Breendonk. Such fortresses, almost always obsolete before they were completed, embody man's limited ability to learn from experience and illustrate the fact that it is "our mightiest projects that most obviously betray the degree of our insecurity." Sebald also portrays Francois Mitterand's new Bibliotheque Nationale in its Babylonian proportions and inefficiencies as hostile not just to readers, but to the books it is meant to preserve as well. It is nothing less than an "official manifestation of the increasingly importunate urge to break with everything which still has some living connection to the past."
This drive towards historical amnesia is evident everywhere, not only in architectural or cultural monstrosities but also in the decreasing standards of contemporary art and scholarship. We ignore the dead at our peril. Sebald's fiction is not merely an intricately ordered collection of fragments shored against our ruin--though it is beautifully and hauntingly that. Most importantly, it is Sebald's own "historical metaphysic," in which he brings the past to light as an effort to prevent it repeating itself either as tragedy or as farce. show less
In the novel a nameless--but familiarly Sebaldian--narrator recounts Austerlitz's odyssey into this past, which, once the trails he had pursued as a teenager proved dead-ends, he had strenuously avoided. Despite feelings of "wrenching inside [him], a kind of heartache which" he later realized, "was caused by the vortex of past time" he engaged in a constant "self-censorship of the mind" refusing to acknowledge anything that related to his personal past. "As far as I was concerned, the world ended in the late nineteenth century, I dared go no further than that" Thus, Austerlitz, almost inconceivably, as he himself admits, reached middle-age, a respected lecturer in a London institute of art history, having spent decades compiling his investigations into the history of bourgeois architecture and civilization, knowing next to nothing about "the conquest of Europe by the Germans and the slave state they set up" He eventually, painstakingly, reconstructs his parents' final years, up to his mother's deportation to Theresienstadt in 1944 and his father's internment in 1942 in the French camp of Gurs.
In Austerlitz, Sebald covers much the same intellectual territory as in his earlier novels: an anonymous, neurasthenic narrator who shares many biographical details with the author serves as a foil to reflect, with elaborate asides, the lives of history's victims. Yet, with its cohesive story line, Austerlitz is the least obtrusively constructed and the most emotionally powerful of his four novels. Austerlitz himself is a complex and convincing character, and less of a pawn in the illuminating, but highly cerebral literary chess games of Sebald's earlier fiction.
The fascinating digressions in Austerlitz serve, within the more cohesive context of this book, more effectively as metaphors for the human condition than do his earlier fictional diversions. The narrator expounds, for example, theories of fortification from the Middle Ages to the twentieth century, the increasing complexity of which culminated in the star-shaped fortresses of Neuf-Brisach and Breendonk. Such fortresses, almost always obsolete before they were completed, embody man's limited ability to learn from experience and illustrate the fact that it is "our mightiest projects that most obviously betray the degree of our insecurity." Sebald also portrays Francois Mitterand's new Bibliotheque Nationale in its Babylonian proportions and inefficiencies as hostile not just to readers, but to the books it is meant to preserve as well. It is nothing less than an "official manifestation of the increasingly importunate urge to break with everything which still has some living connection to the past."
This drive towards historical amnesia is evident everywhere, not only in architectural or cultural monstrosities but also in the decreasing standards of contemporary art and scholarship. We ignore the dead at our peril. Sebald's fiction is not merely an intricately ordered collection of fragments shored against our ruin--though it is beautifully and hauntingly that. Most importantly, it is Sebald's own "historical metaphysic," in which he brings the past to light as an effort to prevent it repeating itself either as tragedy or as farce. show less
“Like a tightrope walker who has forgotten how to put one foot in front of the other, all I felt was the swaying of the precarious structure on which I stood, stricken with Terror at the realization that the ends of the balancing pole gleaming far out on the edges of my field of vision were no longer my guiding lights, as before, but malignant enticements to me to cast myself into the depths.”
This book is a story about Austerlitz’s life, as narrated by an unnamed friend. Austerlitz migrated as a young child from Czechoslovakia to the UK just prior to WWII. The Welsh foster family that took him in did not give him any background about his origins. He experiences snippets of memory, resulting in (eventually) a search to determine show more his identity and what happened to his family.
“I felt that the decrepit state of these once magnificent buildings, with their broken gutters, walls blackened by rainwater, crumbling plaster revealing the coarse masonry beneath it, windows boarded up or clad with corrugated iron, precisely reflected my own state of mind...”
This is not an easy read. It is filled with lengthy, stream-of-consciousness sentences with no chapter breaks. It is sprinkled with photographs of architectural sites such as the train stations that evoke the Kindertransport and trains that carried deportees to the camps. It is an amalgamation of architectural, historical, and personal details. The reasons behind the detailed descriptions of architecture and fortresses in the beginning will eventually become apparent, but it takes patience and is not one to rush through.
It is meditative and subtle. It examines the impact of the traumatic events of WWII (which are never specifically depicted) that reverberate years later. We follow Austerlitz, via the narrator, to places that were part of the horrible events, but since his visits occur years afterward, it creates a feeling of internal dissonance (in Austerlitz and in the reader). It was not my favorite in terms of reading experience, but it certainly will linger in my thoughts.
“In my photographic work I was always especially entranced, said Austerlitz, by the moment when the shadows of reality, so to speak, emerge out of nothing on the exposed paper, as memories do in the middle of the night, darkening again if you try to cling to them, just like a photographic print left in the developing bath too long.” show less
This book is a story about Austerlitz’s life, as narrated by an unnamed friend. Austerlitz migrated as a young child from Czechoslovakia to the UK just prior to WWII. The Welsh foster family that took him in did not give him any background about his origins. He experiences snippets of memory, resulting in (eventually) a search to determine show more his identity and what happened to his family.
“I felt that the decrepit state of these once magnificent buildings, with their broken gutters, walls blackened by rainwater, crumbling plaster revealing the coarse masonry beneath it, windows boarded up or clad with corrugated iron, precisely reflected my own state of mind...”
This is not an easy read. It is filled with lengthy, stream-of-consciousness sentences with no chapter breaks. It is sprinkled with photographs of architectural sites such as the train stations that evoke the Kindertransport and trains that carried deportees to the camps. It is an amalgamation of architectural, historical, and personal details. The reasons behind the detailed descriptions of architecture and fortresses in the beginning will eventually become apparent, but it takes patience and is not one to rush through.
It is meditative and subtle. It examines the impact of the traumatic events of WWII (which are never specifically depicted) that reverberate years later. We follow Austerlitz, via the narrator, to places that were part of the horrible events, but since his visits occur years afterward, it creates a feeling of internal dissonance (in Austerlitz and in the reader). It was not my favorite in terms of reading experience, but it certainly will linger in my thoughts.
“In my photographic work I was always especially entranced, said Austerlitz, by the moment when the shadows of reality, so to speak, emerge out of nothing on the exposed paper, as memories do in the middle of the night, darkening again if you try to cling to them, just like a photographic print left in the developing bath too long.” show less
Austerlitz is an odd, old-fashioned book. Its narrator encounters the title character. He then repeats the story Austerlitz tells, and in Austerlitz's own story, sometimes he tells the stories of others. So the entire narration is at least once and often twice-removed. I don't think there is any actual dialogue anywhere in the book. Just first person narrative. The paragraphs go on forever, and there is one famous sentence that takes up over 7 pages (apparently 9 in the original German). But despite these obstacles, the book is highly readable. Even when it ranges over time and distance again and again without a break, the narrative keeps its hold on you and makes you keep reading. You really don't want to put this book down. The black show more and white photographs interspersed throughout the text are an essential part of the experience, also. Sometimes they are clearly referred to in the text, sometimes not.
The story itself concern's Austerlitz's exploration of his own past, trying to track down what became of the parents who put him on a train from Czechoslovakia in 1939 when he is 4 years old to escape the coming Nazi invasion. He ends up in Wales, with a minister and his wife, who give him little love and no information about his true identity, which he only discovers as a teenager--or at least he discovers his real name. Only later does he face up to the task of discovering the truth behind his life. This comes well into the book, however. In the earlier sections Austerlitz speaks to the narrator about architecture, but as we will see, everything is related. Some reviews compare this book to the work of Borges, whom Sebald admired, and in the way it mixes fact and history into a work of fiction, that is true enough, but this novel doesn't contain the sense of the fantastic that much of Borges' work does. Even the dreams and visions that plague Austerlitz, narrated in great detail, are still firmly grounded in reality.
It is wonderful to see old memories awakening in Austerlitz as he visits Prague and other places, and as he learns more, he begins to understand some of his own past behavior and period of depression. As an academic, he struggles through a long work in German to better understand the Theresienstadt ghetto/concentration where his mother was sent. But while the Holocaust is at the center of the book, it isn't the main focus in my opinion. Rather, it is a book about how the past affects us in ways we may not even understand. In that sense, the book is more Faulknerian than Borgesian. ("The past is never dead. ... Actually, it's not even past.") Austerlitz, like the rest of us, will never find all the answers he seeks. But Sebald has brought this fragile, complicated character to life and given us a glimpse of real and psychological horrors that cannot--and must not--be forgotten. show less
The story itself concern's Austerlitz's exploration of his own past, trying to track down what became of the parents who put him on a train from Czechoslovakia in 1939 when he is 4 years old to escape the coming Nazi invasion. He ends up in Wales, with a minister and his wife, who give him little love and no information about his true identity, which he only discovers as a teenager--or at least he discovers his real name. Only later does he face up to the task of discovering the truth behind his life. This comes well into the book, however. In the earlier sections Austerlitz speaks to the narrator about architecture, but as we will see, everything is related. Some reviews compare this book to the work of Borges, whom Sebald admired, and in the way it mixes fact and history into a work of fiction, that is true enough, but this novel doesn't contain the sense of the fantastic that much of Borges' work does. Even the dreams and visions that plague Austerlitz, narrated in great detail, are still firmly grounded in reality.
It is wonderful to see old memories awakening in Austerlitz as he visits Prague and other places, and as he learns more, he begins to understand some of his own past behavior and period of depression. As an academic, he struggles through a long work in German to better understand the Theresienstadt ghetto/concentration where his mother was sent. But while the Holocaust is at the center of the book, it isn't the main focus in my opinion. Rather, it is a book about how the past affects us in ways we may not even understand. In that sense, the book is more Faulknerian than Borgesian. ("The past is never dead. ... Actually, it's not even past.") Austerlitz, like the rest of us, will never find all the answers he seeks. But Sebald has brought this fragile, complicated character to life and given us a glimpse of real and psychological horrors that cannot--and must not--be forgotten. show less
Some books come right to the point and you are one with the characters from the beginning. Not this one. Sebald does all he can to put obstacles between the reader and the nominal protagonist, both by style and character.
A nameless narrator stands between the reader and Jacques Austerlitz, recounting how they meet by accident and then seem to keep meeting until a sort of friendship is formed. At first, Austerlitz talks only of architecture; eventually, he reveals a story of lost identity and emotional starvation as part of the World War II Kindertransport, and how he manages through sudden memories and hints of memory to find his way to his real history.
Sebald's style is not easy. There are no chapters, and no paragraphs, and the prose, show more translated from the German, contains some extraordinarily lengthy sentences that stretch for pages. In addition, the convention of Austerlitz telling our narrator a story (which of course he is telling to us), and of others telling Austerlitz stories which he in turn tells the narrator, creates a feeling of mirrors within mirrors and requires close attention.
Sebald leavens this prose with many photographic images of what is mentioned in the text, all of them documentary style black-and-white. They add to the bleakness of the story.
And yet - I can't help feeling that this novel will only get richer on subsequent readings. The language is meticulous and often the descriptions are vivid, far more than the photographs. The emotions inherent in the story can be found in some of the most restrained prose. As soon as I finished it, I started it again, to see how I would react to the style once more, and I was hard pressed to put it down.
One of the members of our reading group called it a fever dream, and it has some of that dreamlike quality, disjunct and often involving memories, dreams, and the stories of others, someof whom are long gone. It's not for everyone, surely. I would not call it 'entertaining' - but striking, and significant.
Note also that Sebald is a German of the generation after the war, and that he wrote this in German, speaking to his fellows at least, using an oblique angle to illuminate the damage caused by a now-familiar horror. show less
A nameless narrator stands between the reader and Jacques Austerlitz, recounting how they meet by accident and then seem to keep meeting until a sort of friendship is formed. At first, Austerlitz talks only of architecture; eventually, he reveals a story of lost identity and emotional starvation as part of the World War II Kindertransport, and how he manages through sudden memories and hints of memory to find his way to his real history.
Sebald's style is not easy. There are no chapters, and no paragraphs, and the prose, show more translated from the German, contains some extraordinarily lengthy sentences that stretch for pages. In addition, the convention of Austerlitz telling our narrator a story (which of course he is telling to us), and of others telling Austerlitz stories which he in turn tells the narrator, creates a feeling of mirrors within mirrors and requires close attention.
Sebald leavens this prose with many photographic images of what is mentioned in the text, all of them documentary style black-and-white. They add to the bleakness of the story.
And yet - I can't help feeling that this novel will only get richer on subsequent readings. The language is meticulous and often the descriptions are vivid, far more than the photographs. The emotions inherent in the story can be found in some of the most restrained prose. As soon as I finished it, I started it again, to see how I would react to the style once more, and I was hard pressed to put it down.
One of the members of our reading group called it a fever dream, and it has some of that dreamlike quality, disjunct and often involving memories, dreams, and the stories of others, someof whom are long gone. It's not for everyone, surely. I would not call it 'entertaining' - but striking, and significant.
Note also that Sebald is a German of the generation after the war, and that he wrote this in German, speaking to his fellows at least, using an oblique angle to illuminate the damage caused by a now-familiar horror. show less
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ThingScore 100
He is one of the most gripping writers imaginable. It's not the story so much that takes hold of the reader: it's the descriptions and the meditations, which can be hallucinatory in their effect. This is true of all his books, but in Austerlitz the proportion of rumination and evocation to narrative is larger than ever.
added by jburlinson
Sebald zeigt sich auf der epischen Langstrecke als großer Erzähler, denn mit "Austerlitz" hat er sich selbst übertroffen und ein Wunderwerk an unvergesslicher Prosa geschaffen. Wenn Austerlitz gegen Ende meint, von ihm werde nichts bleiben als ein Stapel Photographien, so hat ihn in diesem Punkt sein sonst so untrügliches Gespür zum Glück doch getäuscht. Denn Sebald ist es gelungen, show more Austerlitz hinüberzuerzählen und zu retten in ein bleibendes Stück Literatur, das der Vergänglichkeit trotzt. show less
added by Indy133
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Author Information
32+ Works 16,890 Members
He studied German language and literature in Freiburg, Switzerland and Manchester. He has taught at the University of East Anglia in Norwich, England since 1970. He became a professor of European literature in 1987. From 1989 to 1994 was the first director of the British Centre for Literary Translation. He was born in Wertach in Allgau, Germany in show more 1944. (Bowker Author Biography) show less
W. G. Sebald has a Legacy Library. Legacy libraries are the personal libraries of famous readers, entered by LibraryThing members from the Legacy Libraries group.
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Contains
Common Knowledge
- Canonical title
- Austerlitz
- Original title
- Austerlitz
- Alternate titles
- The Pop Star's Kiss: One Night Stands, Book 2
- Original publication date
- 2001; 2018-01-15
- People/Characters
- Jacques Austerlitz; Pereira; Vira
- Important places
- Europe; Antwerp, Antwerp, Belgium; Belgium; Czech Republic; England, UK; France (show all 13); Germany; London, England, UK; Mariánské Lázně, Czech Republic (as Marienbad, Germany); Paris, France; Prague, Czech Republic; Theresienstadt concentration camp, Terezín, Czech Republic (German-occupied Czech lands); Terezín, Czech Republic
- Important events
- Holocaust; World War II
- First words
- In the second half of the 1960s I traveled repeatedly from England to Belgium, partly for study purposes, partly for other reasons which were never entirely clear to me, staying sometimes for just one or two days, sometimes f... (show all)or several weeks.
- Last words
- (Click to show. Warning: May contain spoilers.)Sitting by the moat of the fortress of Breendonk, I read to the end of the fifteenth chapter of Heshel's Kingdom, and then set out on my way back to Mechelen, reaching the town as evening began to fall.
- Blurbers
- Eder, Richard; Lane, Anthony; Sontag, Susan
- Original language
- German
- Disambiguation notice
- Don't combine this title with Young Austerlitz which is merely an extract of the complete work.
Classifications
- Genres
- General Fiction, Fiction and Literature, Historical Fiction
- DDC/MDS
- 833.914 — Literature & rhetoric German & related literatures German fiction 1900- 1900-1990 1945-1990
- LCC
- PT2681 .E18 .A9513 — Language and Literature German, Dutch and Scandinavian literatures German literature Individual authors or works 1961-2000
- BISAC
Statistics
- Members
- 4,765
- Popularity
- 2,972
- Reviews
- 117
- Rating
- (4.14)
- Languages
- 23 — Catalan, Czech, Danish, Dutch, English, Estonian, Finnish, French, German, Greek, Hebrew, Hungarian, Italian, Japanese, Norwegian (Bokmål), Polish, Portuguese, Romanian, Russian, Serbian, Spanish, Swedish, Turkish
- Media
- Paper, Audiobook, Ebook
- ISBNs
- 73
- ASINs
- 15