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W. G. Sebald

Random House, New York, 2011, 2001, German, (English translation)

Fiction

ISBN: 9780375504839

On 1 book list

Barry Bergdoll

On Barry Bergdoll’s Book List

Sebald’s poetic interchange of photography and texts in counterpoint rather than illustration is to me one of the most compelling projects in late 20th-century literature. The relationship to architecture is of course only tangential, but his are the only books that when I finish, my temptation is simply to start again. The opening lines about 19th-century architecture, beginning in Antwerp, reveal that often the greatest texture of architectural appreciation comes from the least expected places.

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