In 1939, five-year-old Jacques Austerlitz is sent to England on a Kindertransport and placed with foster parents.
This childless couple promptly erase from the boy all knowledge of his identity and he grows up ignorant of his past. Later in life, after a career as an architectural historian, Austerlitz – having avoided all clues that might point to his origin – finds the past returning to haunt him and he is forced to explore what happened fifty years before.
Austerlitz is W.G. Sebald’s melancholic masterpiece.
Uncomfortable Truths
There is no book more haunting than W. G. Sebald’s Austerlitz. I would not advise anyone unfamiliar with his earlier books to make it their introduction to his work, because his decision to do...
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