The Rings of Saturn

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W. G. Sebald

New Directions, New York, 1998; originally published 1995 (in German), English

Fiction

ISBN: 9780811213783

A fictional account of a walking tour through England’s East Anglia whose sights and sounds conjure up images of Britain's imperial past, ranging They from the slave trade to the Battle of Britain.

On 3 book lists

Alan Balfour

On Alan Balfour’s Book List

I enjoy all of Sebald’s writing. The Rings of Saturn remains my favorite, but his essay collections are also powerful, for example, On the Natural History of Destruction. Sebald writes about memory and the loss of memory (both personal and collective) and the decay of civilizations, traditions, or physical objects—buildings and beliefs.

Maira Kalman

On Maira Kalman’s Book List

Ditto what I said about The Emigrants.

Prem Krishnamurthy

On Prem Krishnamurthy’s Book List

This is the book that I have read most, and most deeply—a densely interwoven work of texts and spectral images that traces multiple geographies of colonialism, manufacturing, and influence. As in much of Sebald’s writing, images of uncertain provenance embed themselves throughout the narrative without captioning or context—curious interlopers that gain their strange authority through precise form and lack of comment.

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