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According to the author, his Uncle Ambros's increasingly improbable tales were the result of 'an illness which causes lost memories to be replaced by fantastic inventions.' Luckily for us, Sebald seems to have inherited the same syndrome. En route to Ithaca (the real upstate New York location but also the symbolic one), he comes to feel 'like a travelling companion of my neighbor in the next lane.' After the car speeds away-'the children pulling clownish faces out of the rear window-I felt deserted and desolate for a time.' Sebald's narrative is purposely moth-holed (butterfly-ridden, actually-there's a recurring Nabokov-with-a-net type), an escape from the prison-house of realism. But he brings these men before our eyes only to make them fade away, 'longing for extinction.' Two were eventual suicides, another died in an asylum, the fourth still lived under a 'poisonous canopy' more than 40 years after his parents' death in Nazi Germany. Sebald re-creates the lives of four exiles-five if you include his oblique self-portrait-through their own accounts, others' recollections, and pictures and found objects. Seller Inventory # 6939Ī meditation on memory and loss. ***For all our books, postage is charged at cost, allowing for packaging: any shipping rates indicated on ABE are an average only: we will reduce the P & P charge where appropriate - please contact us for postal rates for heavier books and sets etc. Published initially as a hardback in 1996 by Harvill Press, this is the first impression of the first UK paperback edition. Gradually, as Sebald's precise, almost dreamlike prose works its magic, the four narrations merge into one overwhelming evocation of exile and loss.' (Quote from rear wrapper blurb). ***'The Emigrants at first appears simply to document the lives of four Jewish exiles or emigres in the twentieth century. 237 pages plus eight pages of publisher's adverts to rear. With a neat ownership name to the top of the inside of the front cover. Extremities of wrappers very slightly rubbed. A touch of fading to the front cover along the spine. ***Near fine in illustrated card wrappers. Illustrated with black and white photographs throughout. Translated from the German by Michael Hulse. First impression of the first UK paperback edition with full number-string sequence including the no.

The Emigrants by W.G. Sebald