Austerlitz Author: [Germany] Winfried Sebald Publisher: Guangxi Normal University Press

◉ Introduction

How much memory do people really need?

When traveling alone through time, what do we really need to remember and face?

A noble soul in pursuit of the truth, a strange and dreamy memory puzzle,

From Wales to London to Prague to Paris,

A Wittgensteinian man, wandering between reason and sin,

Travel through the snow of time to reach the wound that precedes the body.

This book is the internationally renowned representative work of German writer Winfried Sebald, and it is also the last work he published before his death. The name Austerlitz itself is a metaphor. It is not only a typical Jewish name, but also the name of a famous battle, and it is also pronounced so similarly to Auschwitz. This novel tells the story of a Jewish boy adopted by a British couple. After learning his real name "Austerlitz", he spent his whole life pursuing the mystery of his life. From Wales to Paris, from libraries to subway stations, from Antwerp to Berlin... and as he explores "self", one piece after another of the indispensable memory puzzle is gradually connected, restoring a sad personal history, a family past that is hard to let go, and the dark history that once happened on the European continent. Sebald, with his unique style and tone, breaks through the boundaries of traditional novels, blending fiction and fact, memory and history, image and language, narrative and commentary, weaving a story that is both rational and emotional. Through Austerlitz, we travel to a vast land with an unfathomable sense of time, a world composed of hazy images and figures, shrouded in light and fog.

◉Media Recommendation

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Sebald is the Joyce of the 21st century. His story, about one man's odyssey through the dark ages of European history, is a culmination of continental thought and literature, and one of the most moving and sincere novels of the postwar world. - The Times

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If you think modern literature is dead, try Sebald. The spirits of masters like Kafka and Borges live on in Sebald. For Sebald, the "big questions" still exist, and he wants to answer them. --The Wall Street Journal

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Most writers, even the good ones, write about things that can be written; and the very great ones, like Sebald, write about things that cannot be written. —The New York Times

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Sebald belongs to a rare and elusive species... He is addictive, and once you are captured by his work, you will never want to put it down. - The New Yorker

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One of the most gripping writers you can imagine. An originality that defies categorization and an essential voice for our time. His work should be ranked with Kafka, Borges and Proust.

Sad, beautiful, strange, haunting... Sebald's secret is that he sees himself as a voice of conscience that seems outdated in this era, he speaks for the dead and does not forget justice.

Very few writers can make people realize the charm of language. ——New York Times Book Review

◉Editor's Recommendation

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Sebald, the last master of modernist literature, is a pioneer of style who ranks among Kafka, Joyce, and Proust. He has won many major literary awards in Europe and America, including the Berlin Literature Prize, the Bremen Literature Prize, the Heine Prize, the Heinrich Böll Literature Prize, etc. He was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature in France.

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A writer among writers, Susan Sontag praised it as "great literature", Zagajewski wrote a poem to pay tribute to it, and James Wood recommended it in a long article.

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Sebald's masterpiece "Austerlitz": sad, beautiful, strange, noble, the crown of German literature in the 21st century, written for responsibility and conscience.

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His writing has the "solemnity of a bell". It not only answers grand questions, but also caters to hot topics in current cultural discussions, thus arousing widespread discussion and gaining wide acclaim.

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"Sebald is the Joyce of the 21st century!" ——European media comments on "Austerlitz"

Homer's Odysseus is a homecoming to evergreen Ithaca

Joyce's Ulysses is a testament to the mediocrity of Dublin

Sebald's Austerlitz is a recognition of Auschwitz

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Awards:

National Book Critics Circle Award

Koret Jewish Book Award

The Independent Foreign Fiction Prize

Wenger Book Award

The New York Times Book Review Editor's Pick

Los Angeles Times, New York Times, and New York Times Book Review Best Books of the Year

◉About the Author

Winfried Sebald

Born in Germany in 1944, he taught at the University of East Anglia in the UK from 1970 and died in a car accident in 2001. He was a late bloomer, but his reputation rose sharply after his death. He is considered a writer of Nobel Prize in Literature level. He has won the Berlin Literature Award, Bremen Literature Award, Heinrich Böll Literature Award, Heine Literature Award, etc. His representative works include "The Settler", "Vertigo", "Rings of Saturn", "Austerlitz", etc. "Austerlitz" is his most ambitious work, in which he fully faces the theme of time.