Product Description

Likened to Proust, to Gunter Grass and Virginia Woolf, W. G. Sebald (1944-2001) is one of the most important writers of our time, combining a wide readership with universal critical acclaim. Now available in paperback, this first collection to appear in English provides a thorough assessment of his achievement through newly commissioned essays by leading international scholars, offering interdisciplinary perspectives on Sebald's work. Features * The first full-length critical book on Sebald to appear in English. * All new essays by leading international scholars. * Covers a range of topics that interested Sebald - such as landscape, nature, travel, haunting and memory. * Presents interdisciplinary perspectives on Sebald's work.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #130693 in Books
• Published on: 2006-05-18
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 256 pages

Review
Along with its comprehensive bibliography, this will be an enlightening and useful guide as readers wander with Sebald across his bleak composite landscapes. These astute and critically reflective essays provide a wide-ranging consideration of the literary innovation and intellectual complexity of Sebald's explorations of history, culture and memory. The collection also highlights, through highly sophisticated and subtle readings that bring together trauma studies, psychoanalysis, and poststructuralist thought, the broad significance of Sebald's provocative engagement with the traumatic histories of WWII and its aftermath. -- Cathy Caruth, author of 'Unclaimed Experience: Trauma, Narrative and History' Sebald demonstrates that literature can be, literally, indispensable. He was one by whom literature continues to live. -- Susan Sontag Together with their contributors the editors have set a new standard for the rapidly evolving scholarship on Sebald. This will be an indispensable volume for years to come. The Companion provides a wide-ranging and accurate picture of the main debates concerning Sebald scholarship at present, and also provides refreshing perspectives on a writer who has received huge attention in recent years. The contributions are both scholarly and highly readable, and provide the reader with an entertaining and informed window on the world of Sebald research. It is of direct relevance for anyone interested in Sebald, and further, for anyone interested in the current academic discourses around collective and individual memory, media, post-memory, and trauma. Zeitschrift fur Rezensionen zur germanistischen Literaturwissenschaft Along with its comprehensive bibliography, this will be an enlightening and useful guide as readers wander with Sebald across his bleak composite landscapes. These astute and critically reflective essays provide a wide-ranging consideration of the literary innovation and intellectual complexity of Sebald's explorations of history, culture and memory. The collection also highlights, through highly sophisticated and subtle readings that bring together trauma studies, psychoanalysis, and poststructuralist thought, the broad significance of Sebald's provocative engagement with the traumatic histories of WWII and its aftermath. Sebald demonstrates that literature can be, literally, indispensable. He was one by whom literature continues to live. Together with their contributors the editors have set a new standard for the rapidly evolving scholarship on Sebald. This will be an indispensable volume for years to come. The Companion provides a wide-ranging and accurate picture of the main debates concerning Sebald scholarship at present, and also provides refreshing perspectives on a writer who has received huge attention in recent years. The contributions are both scholarly and highly readable, and provide the reader with an entertaining and informed window on the world of Sebald research. It is of direct relevance for anyone interested in Sebald, and further, for anyone interested in the current academic discourses around collective and individual memory, media, post-memory, and trauma.

About the Author
J.J. Long is Professor of German at the University of Durham. He has published widely on twentieth-century literature, and is the author of The Novels of Thomas Bernhard (2001). His current research concerns the relationship between photography and narrative. Anne Whitehead is Senior Lecturer in Contemporary Literature and Theory at the University of Newcastle upon Tyne. She is the author of Trauma Fiction and co-editor, with Michael Rossington, of Theories of Memory and of Between the Psyche and the Polis: Refiguring History in Literature and Theory and, with Jonathan Long, of W. G. Sebald.