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Speak, Silence: In Search of W. G. Sebald
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About This Book
The long-awaited first biography of W. G. Sebald W. G. Sebald was one of the most extraordinary and influential writers of the twentieth century. Through books including The Emigrants, Austerlitz and The Rings of Saturn, he pursued an original literary vision that combined fiction, history, autobiography and photography and addressed some of the most profound themes of contemporary literature: the burden of the Holocaust, memory, loss and exile.The first biography to explore his life and work, Speak, Silence pursues the true Sebald through the memories of those who knew him and through the work he left behind. This quest takes Carole Angier from Sebald's birth as a second-generation German at the end of the Second World War, through his rejection of the poisoned inheritance of the Third Reich, to his emigration to England, exploring the choice of isolation and exile that drove his work. It digs deep into a creative mind on the edge, finding profound empathy and paradoxical ruthlessness, saving humour, and an elusive mix of fact and fiction in his life as well as work. The result is a unique, ferociously original portrait.
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Reviews
"Sebald fans will find much to consider in this detailed tome."
"At the same time, she doesn't seek to shut down doubt over his violations or broader questions about the forms and limits of empathy, but it's to her credit, I think, that she doesn't try to settle the question of Sebald's effects."
"Speak, Silence will certainly turn readers back to the four great books that made him one of the most famous German writers of modern times."
"If future biographies will surely have more to say, Angier has persisted, and written an intelligent and intuitive book about a writer who, like certain mountains, has his own weather, and whose career remains a contested site."
"Her insightful book understands what made him unique."
"Perhaps the greatest attraction of Angier's biography, apart from its patience and thoroughness, is its attention to divided loyalties: to Angier's own admiration of Sebald's work ('the most exquisite writer I know') and to the feelings of the models and sources who regard themselves as betrayed or robbed in Sebald's pages ..."
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