The Emigrants, W G Sebald - An A-Z post

Picture from www.guardian.co.uk

I realise this post is cheating a little bit and really should be under 'E' for Emigrants, but I've been struggling with 'T' so I'm making full use of the 'T' in 'The'!

The Emigrants is by W G Sebald, and is the last text to be read as part of this OU course. As such, it means that I haven't actually read it yet but I've been doing a little reading about it which I can share in this post.

The Emigrants features a narrator and four other characters: a doctor, a teacher, a butler and a painter. All of these characters are surviving in a post-World War II landscape and dealing with it in their own way. The themes of the book inculde exile, loss, imagination and madness.

I'm intrigued by the author himself too. He was born in Bavaria in 1944, and his father was a prisoner of war for until 1947.
He studied for a degree in German literature at the University of Fribourg and became a research student at University of Manchester in 1966.

Following this, in 1970 he became a lecturer at the University of East Anglia and was appointed chair of European literature here in 1987. This I find fascinating as the place I work is only a ten minute walk from the University and it's ground are well known to me.
He died in 2001 in a car crash near Norwich and is buried in a village just south of the city. I never knew that a highly regarded writer such as Sebald had lived much of his life in and around the area where I have grown up.




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This post is part of the A-Z Blogging Challenge. To get involved and check out other blogs taking part just click here. You won't be disappointed!


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