Goethe Book Club: "Austerlitz"

Meet to discuss works from contemporary German-speaking authors in our Goethe Book Club hosted by Chris Walker. Each selection can be read in its English translation or original German; the discussion will be in English.

This month’s book for discussion: W.G. Sebald’s Austerlitz (2001)

Austerlitz is the story of a man’s search for the answer to his life’s central riddle. A small child when he comes to England on a Kindertransport in the summer of 1939, Jacques Austerlitz is told nothing of his real family by the Welsh Methodist minister and his wife who raise him. When he is a much older man, fleeting memories return to him, and obeying an instinct he only dimly understands, Austerlitz follows their trail back to the world he left behind a half century before. There, faced with the void at the heart of twentieth-century Europe, he struggles to rescue his heritage from oblivion.

“Sebald’s final novel; his masterpiece, and one of the supreme works of art of our time.” —John Banville, The Guardian

Summary: From Austerlitz by W.G. Sebald published by Modern Library. Reproduced by permission of The Random House Group Ltd. ©2001