W. G. Sebald: Austerlitz

TENTH ANNIVERSARY EDITION 'A superb meditation on time, loss and retrieval. A new kind of writing, combining fiction, memoir, travelogue, philosophy and much else besides . . . greatness in literature is still possible' John Banville, Irish Times, Books of the Year 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. 'A work of obvious genius and an extraordinary writer way above most of his contemporaries' Literary Review 'Mesmeric, haunting and heartbreakingly tragic. Simply no other writer is writing or thinking on the same level as Sebald. A profound, alluring masterwork of singular genius' Eileen Battersby, Irish Times 'An extraordinary, mesmeric story and one of the most haunting books of the year' Esther Freud, Observer 'Anyone with a serious interest in fiction should read Sebald' John Lanchester, Daily Telegraph