AusterlitzOver the course of a thirty-year conversation unfolding in train stations and travelers' stops across England and Europe, W.G. Sebald's unnamed narrator and Jacques Austerlitz discuss Austerlitz's ongoing efforts to understand who he is. An orphan who came to England alone in the summer of 1939 and was raised by a Welsh Methodist minister and his wife as their own, Austerlitz grew up with no conscious memory of where he came from. W.G. Sebald embodies in Austerlitz the universal human search for identity, the struggle to impose coherence on memory, a struggle complicated by the mind's defenses against trauma. Along the way, this novel of many riches dwells magically on a variety of subjects -- railway architecture, military fortifications; insets, plants, and animals; the constellations; works of art; the strange contents of the museum of a veterinary school; a small circus; and the three capital cities that loom over the book, London, Paris, and Prague -- in the service of its astounding vision. |
Contents
Section 1 | 29 |
Section 2 | 40 |
Section 3 | 52 |
Section 4 | 53 |
Section 5 | 94 |
Section 6 | 99 |
Section 7 | 116 |
Section 8 | 118 |
Section 10 | 152 |
Section 11 | 182 |
Section 12 | 196 |
Section 13 | 240 |
Section 14 | 253 |
Section 15 | 276 |
Section 16 | 277 |
Section 17 | 293 |
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Common terms and phrases
Agata already appearance Austerlitz began beside brought building called close clouds continued course covered dark door emerged empty entirely everything eyes face fact feel felt fields finally floor front garden Gerald German glass going gray green ground half hand head hundred idea kind later least leaves light living looking Marie memory mind morning moving never night once Paris park passed past perhaps photographs picture Prague railway reached reading remember river running seemed sense showed side sitting sometimes soon speak spent standing station steps stood story Street taken thought thousand told took towering town train trees turned usually Vera waiting walked walls whole window