Vertigo by W.G. Sebald

Feb 02, 2017 °°°·.°·..·°¯°·._.· ʜᴇʟᴇɴ Ροζουλί Εωσφόρος ·._.·°¯°·.·° .·°°° ★·.·´¯`·.·★ Ⓥⓔⓡⓝⓤⓢ Ⓟⓞⓡⓣⓘⓣⓞⓡ Ⓐⓡⓒⓐⓝⓤⓢ Ταμετούρο Αμ rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: best

Ψυχεδελικός περίπατος παρέα με τη μνήμη και τη λήθη και ξάφνου μπροστά μας εμφανίζεται μια μεγάλη αγάπη που δεν θα καταπιεί ποτέ η λησμονιά.

Πως να μην ρίξεις όλα τα αστέρια του ουρανού σε αυτό το αίσθημα ιλίγγου και συνειδητής λογοτεχνικής μελαγχολίας;

Το παράξενο γεγονός του έρωτα μας εξηγεί ο Σταντάλ και μας μεταφέρει σε ιστορικές μάχες, απέραντα πεδία πτωμάτων,πολλές ερωμένες,απογοητεύσεις,αρρώστιες και το τελευταίο ταξίδι ανάμεσα σε φαντασία και πραγματικότητα.
Ενα ταξίδι που απολαμβάνουμε γ ...more

flag 137 likes · Like · see review

May 13, 2017 Vit Babenco rated it it was amazing

Vertigo is about properties of human mind and memory and the story goes as a sudden paroxysm of dizziness…

…over the years I had puzzled out a good deal in my own mind, but in spite of that, far from becoming clearer, things now appeared to me more incomprehensible than ever. The more images I gathered from the past, I said, the more unlikely it seemed to me that the past had actually happened in this or that way, for nothing about it could be called normal: most of it was absurd, and if not absu

...more

flag 139 likes · Like · see review

Jan 24, 2013 Orsodimondo rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: germania, racconti

MIND THE GAP

Pisanello: Affresco di San Giorgio e la Principessa. 1433-1438. Verona, Chiesa di Santa Anastasia.

L’io narrante di Sebald è quasi sempre in un periodo delicato e doloroso della vita – conosce la desolazione degli ospedali, ha frequentato anche quelli psichiatrici – è immerso nella malinconia, ma direi anche in qualcosa di molto prossimo alla depressione. È alle prese con una forza con la quale ingaggia una lotta muta, ma strenua.

Pisanello: Affresco di San Giorgio e la Principessa (p ...more

flag 116 likes · Like · see review

Jul 08, 2015 Seemita rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Recommends it for: those who are frequent visitors to memory lanes

Shelves: favorites, germany, fiction

I take refuge in prose as one might in a boat.
Laughter erupted from the adjacent table. A middle-aged lady chided a young man for his deteriorating writing skills. The young man shifted in his chair with a sheepish grin, nudging a tiny vial of admiration in his copper-brown eyes. [Were they bearer of a clandestine moment?] His neigbour was now invoking poetry gods with the adulterated whim of a ventriloquist. He quoted Baudelaire. [I think. Or was that Verlaine? Damn! My poetry quot
I take refuge in prose as one might in a boat.
Laughter erupted from the adjacent table. A middle-aged lady chided a young man for his deteriorating writing skills. The young man shifted in his chair with a sheepish grin, nudging a tiny vial of admiration in his copper-brown eyes. [Were they bearer of a clandestine moment?] His neigbour was now invoking poetry gods with the adulterated whim of a ventriloquist. He quoted Baudelaire. [I think. Or was that Verlaine? Damn! My poetry quotient is not worth a tarnished dime. Anyway, back to the poet.] He is now towering over a nubile being and scanning her notes. This young thing is explaining a sonnet with gusto, snapping the air with jingling of her bangles. [Does there exist a common set of fans of both Baudelaire and Shakespeare? Of course! Stupid me! Focus!] There is a fifth person around the same table who is presently sweeping the quartet with the incisive broom of her bushy eyelashes. [Is she the decision-maker or the note-taker?] Now and then, the five rearrange their gazes that return to settle at familiar corners at regular intervals. Parchments are frayed, books are shuffled, inks are spent, dates are booked and budgets are spooled. At long length, the chairs cough to clear their temporary owners upon seeing them lock the final reminders on their phones. As they exited, I cast a long shot over their diminishing frames which appeared like five uneven jagged tips of an archipelago, with the bunching of few, declaring allegiance within the island clan.

Sitting at a book cafe in a foreign land, I am unlikely to be privy to this fivesome's next rendezvous. But is it likely that a whiff of Baudelaire scent in another time, in another unfamiliar land, on some future date, beseech me to relive this moment? A jingling of bangles over lyrical waves, may be? Didn't I declare an unwavering twenty minutes of my life in their favor, mothering a nascent hope somewhere, of them forming a part of what I write today, and tomorrow? Or was the hope hinged on the dual legs of amnesia and disillusion where a tickle of rowdy adventure may topple the balance for good?

As a wanderer of questionable credentials, I waited for Sebald to join me in unravelling the threads of my hotchpotch travelogue. He has an authorial hand that has penned a stunning vertiginous thesis, legitimizing a dense brethren of Beyle (view spoiler), Dr.K (view spoiler) and himself. Insinuated by a nebulous world, painted in lush resins of metaphors and teeming ruminations, I dived into his mystic valley forgetting about my inadvertent vertigo attacks. But he tendered assurances of safety and like a gentleman, kept his promise. My descent was marked by walks in Vienna and stays in Venice; arty trips to Verona were a revelation where Pisanello waved a enigmatic hello from the celebrated ruins. A shadow of Dante shimmered past at a high point where Casanova was jostling for a foothold. When Beyle left a key to his timid memories with Sebald, the latter, with an eye of a savant, opened only those doors to the visitor which the visitor had the capacity to overcome. After all, vulnerability is not a vanity to be dragged on insensitive roads. Like every able guide, Sebald too, kept a secret or two under his hat that he dazzled me with when I least expected it. He had come to know of my love for Mr.K and peppering an object of love with dust of doubt and loss is a ravenous thing to undertake. But he executed the spraying with such poignancy that I was forced to ponder if these very flaws accentuated the grandiose of Dr.K. He also guided me into the dilettante alleys of his childhood with the transparency of a new born's eyes. He scrapped the bark of his insecurities to reveal a luminous skin that bore its sheen in my adulating mind. Why should bleeding be lamented if oozing blood washes toxic wastes of soul? Well, I didn't mind bleeding a little myself.

And with those blood-stained palms, I finally touched his spine that stood sparkling at one of the shelves of this cafe I was waiting in. Sitting amid the penned memories of literary luminaries, he smiled through the puzzled face of a little child (view spoiler). And I instantly knew I had to befriend the child if I have to learn more of his craft and lend dignity to my travelogue. I swiftly reached out to hold his hand before anyone molly-coddled him to elsewhere. With another memory of Sebald tightly held under my arm, I walked out, thinking if there was any way to escape the vertigo.

---

Note: If my vague albeit sincere review of Sebald's writing has somewhat muddled up your appetite, trust these guys to tell you why you need to read Sebald. ...more

flag 83 likes · Like · see review

May 17, 2017 Steven Godin rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: germany, fiction

Hmm......this is a tough one, and still don't know just quite what to make of it. I Could sit on it for 24 hours and reach a different conclusion, but while it's fresh in my mind I settle for now. And speakings of minds, Sebald going by this certainly had an imaginative one, made up of fragmented memories from his youth, and historical meditation swirled with fantastical events from an overview of the life of Stendhal in 19th century Italy . The positives from Vertigo far outweigh the negatives, Hmm......this is a tough one, and still don't know just quite what to make of it. I Could sit on it for 24 hours and reach a different conclusion, but while it's fresh in my mind I settle for now. And speakings of minds, Sebald going by this certainly had an imaginative one, made up of fragmented memories from his youth, and historical meditation swirled with fantastical events from an overview of the life of Stendhal in 19th century Italy . The positives from Vertigo far outweigh the negatives, but I so wish it had either been an ingenious novel of vast proportions, or a travelogue memoir solely based on fact, it mixes both, with mixed results. It has given me vertigo, a sensation of whirling and loss of focus, I wish I had a feeling of equilibrium, because reviewing this is not going to be easy.

A ghostly figure, which I will call Sebald's doppelganger, takes off from England to travel via the streets of Vienna, Venice, Milan, Verona and Innsbruck, finally ending the journey in the German village of W. (Wertach? his family home). Driven by a hypnotic prose (which was seriously good) Sebald the narrator takes readers on an almost spiritual pilgrimage, bending his own thoughts from places visited in the past, and the felling it evokes inside of him. Some pages contain old photos and drawings that accompany the text, this just adds to the feeling of buried thoughts and periods in the past, some are blurry, but then so was Sebald's mind. Kafka on a bus, his link with a pizzeria in Verona?, the image of Ludwig of Bavaria floating by in a vaporetto in Venice, the mythical figure of Gracchus the huntsman, and an ancient war, entrancingly, are spellbound into Sebald's vision. His wondering travels conjure up some wondrous landscapes through Italy, and are beautifully descriptive, casting bewilderment and daze. In a moment of confusion whilst in the Milan Cathedral, he would all of a sudden no longer have any knowledge of his surroundings, unable to determine whether he was in the land of the living or already in another place, having a force of uncertainty that pervades everything around him. This sums Vertigo up in a nutshell.

Vertigo is not the type of book to put your feet up and relax to, on the contrary, it stimulates the mind, gets you thinking, puzzles and dazzles likewise, to a degree this reminded me in some ways of calvino's "Invisible Cities", for the way it wraps you in a magical blanket. But Sebald writes with a more melancholic and haunting tone. There is sadness within, especially towards the end.
There is a problem though of piling up too much detail and jumping from thought to thought that felt increasingly random and oblique. In terms of the readers, there are no hints about the points he was trying to raise. I don't want to call more than 50% of it's content as self-indulgent, but not to lie, it was. I can understand the whole dislocation from reality thing, but it didn't fully grasp me.
And this coming from someone who generally does not use criticism in reviews, always looking rather for the good things, and there are plenty here. But one must be honest with ones self, otherwise doubt over ones ability to judge fairly is bought into question.
A good solid three stars is the best I can do. ...more

flag 78 likes · Like · see review

Jul 26, 2012 Kris rated it really liked it

Shelves: 1001, fiction, germany

Throughout Vertigo, W.G. Sebald, through deceptively clear prose and photographs, creates a disorienting waking dream for his readers. The novel is divided into four sections, and while there is not a straightforward plot or clear storyline, Sebald weaves thematic connections as well as specific details revisited from different perspectives to hold the novel together. Some sections read as biographies of historical figures, while others are written from the perspective of neurotic characters, tr ...more

flag 61 likes · Like · see review

Jan 13, 2012 Geoff rated it it was amazing

~~~

I listen, as it were, to a soundless opera.

Elsewhere I have called Sebald Europe’s last great rememberer, the final inheritor of the legacy of all those literary and artistic exiles of the disasters of the 20th century, sort of carrying all of that over for us into the new millennium, wandering late in the terrible century the landscape of what was built on top of those ruins and embers, surveying in a more detached mode the reconstruction smothering out the ghosts and relics, tuned to th ~~~

I listen, as it were, to a soundless opera.

Elsewhere I have called Sebald Europe’s last great rememberer, the final inheritor of the legacy of all those literary and artistic exiles of the disasters of the 20th century, sort of carrying all of that over for us into the new millennium, wandering late in the terrible century the landscape of what was built on top of those ruins and embers, surveying in a more detached mode the reconstruction smothering out the ghosts and relics, tuned to the ever-returning, ever-retreating voices of all of those marching backwards into history’s shadows. Within the fissures of all of his prose, the white space between letters, the timeless calamity resounds. Under his gaze the stream’s course not so much reverses as superimposes, a river overlapping a river overlapping a river in an endless palimpsest of fading impressions yet proving ineradicable. He bears witness to what is no longer witnessable, the centuries accumulate in his books, and become semitransparent as fog overlaying a dark morning forest whose trees in the wind resemble the slow undulation of oceans. On these oceans barques are setting sail for unknown places. They return, bereft of crew, ghost ships with holds full of enigmatic riches.

It feels appropriate that the last of his fictions for me to read was his first novel, for Vertigo is something like Sebald’s ricorso. In it Sebald appears already fully formed - the wanderer in search of the strange interdependencies of Life and Fate. The Teutonic conscience that cannot bear the legacy of its homeland and so exiles itself. The living man ferried over Styx to the land of the dead like so many before him, but unable to find port - the hunter Gracchus. The man to whom Art and Letters are a world above the unfathomable world below, one which we carry inside of us and retreat to for meaning, for solace, for safety and for rejuvenation. His procession home is fraught with phantoms, mists, paranoia, doubling, mirror-worlds, unsettling coincidences, emergences of the same, tonal repetitions as in a piece of music, manifestations of nightmares, disconsolate memories, distant warnings, obscure signposts, and the titular unrelenting nauseating imbalance and sense of dislocation. Yet it is as achingly beautiful and melancholy and brilliant as any of his works, and found me at the perfect moment, when its celestial longing and sense of the inherent beauty in the struggle at recovering the irrecoverable (one of the main purposes of Art), of setting down in the more permanent fixture of words and images the finite, the fading, the ungraspable, its determination not to lose the hope of uncovering meaning within the cosmic occurrence of apparently meaningless collapse, however obscure and at times terrifying (”For beauty is nothing but the beginning of terror, which we still are just able to endure”), was much needed succor for this brother huntsman of the Black Forest, this fellow Flying Dutchman.

Di Morte l'angelo a noi s'appressa. Già veggo il ciel discindersi.

~~ ...more

flag 48 likes · Like · see review

Apr 07, 2018 Gorkem rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Sebald, II. Dünya Savaşı sonrası Alman halkının belleklerine, baskı ve korku içinde yaşayan dünyalara bizi gene otobiyografik, deneme ve farklı öykü türlerini kendine has bir biçim içerik içinde müthiş bir okuma zevki sunuyor.

Sebald birbirinden bağımsız yapılardan oluşan öyküleri temalar ile birbirine bağlaması ve gene Sebald'ın inanılmaz doğal anlatımı ile Beyle isimli Napolyon döneminde bir askerin (evet düşündüğümüz kişi) okuyucuya sinyaller çakarak bu kişinin aşklarını ve başarısızlıklarını ...more

flag 44 likes · Like · see review

Jul 13, 2015 [P] rated it really liked it

I find the wonderful German writer W.G. Sebald so difficult to review that my treatment of his second novel, The Rings of Saturn, was no more than a long story about a trip I once made with my then partner to her home in Cornwall, during which, mostly on account of her parents, I lost my mind and my girlfriend. I’m not, of course, going to go over all that again, and I couldn’t even if I wanted to, for I have forgotten much of what took place; yet the disquieting thing is that what I can recall ...more

flag 28 likes · Like · see review

Feb 04, 2018 Grazia rated it really liked it · review of another edition

"Una fiammata brevissima, uno scoppio, sprizzi di scintille e poi ogni cosa si spegne."

Gli ingredienti sono i medesimi di Austerlitz: viaggio, memorie, letteratura, arte, architettura, Storia.
L'impasto si compone di prosa elegantissima (mai artificiosa) e fotografie in bianco e nero. Fotografie come testimonianza di vite che furono. Pensieri, associazioni, parallelismi, ricordi, ricostruzioni. Pensieri evocati che non appartengono più alle persone che li hanno concepiti perché legati ad un temp ...more

flag 30 likes · Like · see review

Sep 14, 2011 Tony rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: german

There are three main arteries to drive the 12.5 miles from my suburban home to downtown Pittsburgh. Foremost is McKnight Road, a six-lane swath through McDonalds and Target and JiffyLube and, well, you know the route. It's under construction this summer, a bridge reduced to two lanes. McKnightmare Road, now. If you insist on going that way, you sit, you do not move. I can not 'not move'.

But as I said, there are two other alternate routes to take; narrower and slower because of the additional tr There are three main arteries to drive the 12.5 miles from my suburban home to downtown Pittsburgh. Foremost is McKnight Road, a six-lane swath through McDonalds and Target and JiffyLube and, well, you know the route. It's under construction this summer, a bridge reduced to two lanes. McKnightmare Road, now. If you insist on going that way, you sit, you do not move. I can not 'not move'.

But as I said, there are two other alternate routes to take; narrower and slower because of the additional traffic, but acceptable at an additional 5 or 10 minutes of actual moving. I took one, Thompson Run Road, which meanders beside that trickle, a pleasant if slower choice. Alas, the world is run by 'C' students, Al McGuire once famously and correctly said. And there is 'stimulus' money in the pipeline. So, they tore up that road too.

My 20-minute journey became a grueling hour instead on the third option, Babcock Boulevard. Stuck again, implacably. A road sign beckoned: Cemetery Lane. The road rose through a dense wood and opened, aptly, in a clearing with a cemetery on the left. And another and another. One mile of graves, canted downhill, the markers facing the winding, rising road. Very old markers, tilted askew from the shifting ground or an unhappy tenant. Monoliths. Family plots. A Star of David on Stoltz' headstone, perhaps incongruously by Gruber's. Hemlocks and arborvitae give shade, maybe peace. I wondered how long ago this road was named. How many souls were laid here before it would be defined as such a place? And how many souls now? I don't know since I can't see over the hill, now from the road where I crawl to work.

I think also of another cemetery and another time. The flatter ground where my parents lie in Pennsylvania's soft coal country. I saw my grandparents buried there when I was a small child. A double marker in Polish joined them among so many others like them. But away from all the others, in the furthest corner, there stood a tiny marker. The other stones were together, a family or community, a church, even in death. But not that little stone, removed palpably from the rest. I asked my father why. He said she was a young woman who was not quite right. She had a baby when she shouldn't have. She killed herself shortly after. I looked there again, and back to my father. He said, because she killed herself she can not be buried with the others. That spot is not consecrated. I suppose he didn't agree with that. He was not that kind of man. But he never said so.

Every visit, I would look away and to that back corner and feel her staring, feel her judgment. It was then, for me, that the robes became costumes, the intonations turned hollow. That marker is still there today, alone. No one joined her and no petition moved her. I doubt she has visitors. I mean, why would I?

(This is not a review anymore than Vertigo is a novel. I've tried to create in my own way the meandering spirit in which Sebald writes. I don't know if I've succeeded or if he would approve. Maybe if I had a grainy photograph of a solitary grave marker nestled amid the prose.) ...more

flag 23 likes · Like · see review

Dec 14, 2012 Jeff Jackson rated it it was amazing

1) Inspired to pick this up after seeing Grant Gee's doc "Patience: After Sebald" which is currently streaming on Netflix. It's worthwhile viewing, especially for Iain Sinclair's comments about why Sebald chose not to put his work into English himself (he was more than capable) and the subtle transformation that happens to his prose through the lens of translation.

2) His first novel isn't as tightly constructed as The Emigrants or as brilliantly sprawling as The Rings of Saturn, but the web of ...more

flag 22 likes · Like · see review

Mar 25, 2018 Tristan rated it liked it · review of another edition

“The more images I gathered from the past, I said, the more unlikely it seemed to me that the past had actually happened in this or that way, for nothing about it could be called normal: most of it was absurd, and if not absurd, then appalling.”

description

How does one explain, let alone come to grips with Sebald's 'Vertigo?' What is it that he does exactly? What is he reaching for?

Judging from fellow reviewers, this seems to be a question of some import, leaving vast amounts of his readers – devotees ...more

flag 21 likes · Like · see review

Jan 07, 2013 K.D. Absolutely rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Recommended to K.D. by: 1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die (2006-2012)

Shelves: 1001-core, europe, travel, memoirs, drama, war

Dizzying yet beautiful. Reading Sebald, my second, is like drinking red wine. It tastes bitter yet there is an aftertaste of something sweet that is left in your mouth. It makes your head spin after a while and yet you enjoy the feeling. It is something that you don't normally drink (since I prefer beer being cheaper generally) but it gives you some class and it is reason enough for you to finish the till the last drop from the glass.

What I am trying to say is that this book takes you to an unfa Dizzying yet beautiful. Reading Sebald, my second, is like drinking red wine. It tastes bitter yet there is an aftertaste of something sweet that is left in your mouth. It makes your head spin after a while and yet you enjoy the feeling. It is something that you don't normally drink (since I prefer beer being cheaper generally) but it gives you some class and it is reason enough for you to finish the till the last drop from the glass.

What I am trying to say is that this book takes you to an unfamiliar places and events: Napoleon's war-ravaged France with dead bodies lying on the streets, Frank Kafka's hometown or just those side streets in European cities and the people who lived in them whose names don't ring a bell at all. I mean, I have been to Paris (in 2004) and those two weeks I still vividly remember but with the many world-known events that happened in that city, there are just too much images (from books, films, television) that compete in my mind and clutter those that I had during the quick two-week visit. So, the images of Beyle (first of the four narratives int his book that was actually that of the writer Stendhal) dying of syphilis is a bit uneventful for me to associate with first-hand images of Paris. However, what hooks you to continue reading is Sebald's easy to read prose and the interesting pictures and illustrations that are supposed to be the actual and yet felt only imagined images of the events narrated in the book.

The book's title is very apt as the narratives, told in first person, seem factual and yet while you are reading, you would wonder whether those events are actual because how could the narrators (four of them) recall all those details if they happened a long time ago. You can immediately conclude that they are unreliable narrators and yet you can't stop reading because the beautiful lyrical prose of Sebald prods you to go on. I mean, his storytelling does not have concrete solid plot but there is underlying theme - vertigo, that is - that connects the four stories. I know. I know. Vertigo as a theme is like having a fluke as a trematode to discuss in your Biology class. I mean, who cares about flukes, right? But flukes are interesting enough because as parasites they can feed from many other species that they can even outlive. I mean, Sebald does not offer something new really but his style is distinct (free flowing narration that do not have plot yet his prose is lyrical and too hard to pass up on) and so you miss a lot by not reading his works.

This is my second Sebald. My first was Austerlitz (4 stars) that I read five years ago. Five years ago and still I remember what it is all about. His books are not easily available here in the Philippines so I order them via Book Depository or Amazon.com but I swear that they are really worth your every hard-earned centavo. ...more

flag 21 likes · Like · see review

Apr 18, 2011 MJ Nicholls rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: novels, art-or-illustrated, central-europe

It’s hard to write about what Sebald does, since his style belongs to a tradition of German writers such as Thomas Bernhard: it’s sparse, lyrical, poetic and formally original.

Vertigo is the first of four “novels” where he pioneered his mix of memoir, historical lecture and evocative description. Like The Emigrants, the book is divided into four separate trips, whose connections (conceptual or intellectual) I am too feeble to understand. Each section explores the tension between memory and art, ...more

flag 22 likes · Like · see review

Sep 03, 2018 Argos rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Otobiyografik öğeler taşıyan, gerçekle kurguyu iç içe geçiren yeni bir tarzla yazılmış dört öyküden (ben buna deneme-öyküler diyorum) oluşan kitap daha önce okuduğum “Kır Evinde İkamet”e göre biraz daha zorlayıcı. Dikkat çekici bir metin yapısı var. Efemeralarla (eski resim, bilet, pul, afiş, makbuz vs...) hem metni zenginleştiriyor hem de bazen cümlenin ortasında bir kelime yerine bir efemera kullanarak cümleyi bağlıyor Sebald.
Okunması bazen macera kitabı gibi heyecanlı, bazen de “ben ne okuyo ...more

flag 21 likes · Like · see review

Jun 06, 2011 Szplug rated it really liked it · review of another edition

It's interesting for me—as I reacquaint myself with the frequencies of the Sebald-via-Hulse literary signal—to contrast the prose styles of the late German and the modern French academic Mathias Énard, the author of the five-hundred-plus page shotgun blast Zone : whereas Énard's amphetaminic, propulsive narration piles one gruesome event upon another with such energized and relentless urgency that no single scene is given the opportunity to overwhelm or paralyze the reader with horror, but ra It's interesting for me—as I reacquaint myself with the frequencies of the Sebald-via-Hulse literary signal—to contrast the prose styles of the late German and the modern French academic Mathias Énard, the author of the five-hundred-plus page shotgun blast Zone : whereas Énard's amphetaminic, propulsive narration piles one gruesome event upon another with such energized and relentless urgency that no single scene is given the opportunity to overwhelm or paralyze the reader with horror, but rather blends and merges into a chiaroscuro of violence that swells in Döppler fashion as the conclusion approaches, Sebald slows the pace to a steady crawl, a languid and leisurely stroll through memory's arcade, taking time over and again to pause before a particular reminiscence—and its temporal residues—in order to fully absorb the vibrations emanating from its anamnestic position.

It seems to me that each of Sebald's books represent the author working through his own collection of memories and reminiscences and, in individuating particular scenes, assaying to determine the degree of truth constituted within—and bemusedly lending free rein to the myriad brushes wielded by his imagination in filling in whatever gaps exist, easily crossing the ever hazy borders between fiction and (relational) fact—and fluidly intermingling unusual incidents from the lives and writings of historic personages whose physical and/or textual beings once occupied and performed amidst the same physical spaces where Herr Sebald places himself in the course of unfolding his eerily calm, episodic memory games—in order to flavor a recollection to better suit the memorial meal he is creating. Is the Sebald who narrates the books the same as the individual of the identical name who penned them? Does the placid shell splintered with cracks form the outer layer of both? How much does fiction abut, overlay, and obliterate the actuality of the past as remembered by the author? Could even he have stated the amounts with certainty before his untimely passing? It's a fascinating game we are privy to here, especially in that our own arranging of the past will influence that which the writer has put on paper for us to ingest and absorb; and the spicing provided by the shimmering drama enacted throughout his literary and historic borrowings finds the nodal points of similarity in perspectives unvaryingly alienated and chafed by the ebb and flow of the uncanny and unusual scenarios that life configures and bestows upon the human soul during the course of its journey in earthly incarnation—creating a framework of pond ripples that effortlessly sync with the perspective of any reader who has stood raw and bemused before the impenetrable mystery of his own life. That the eerie dissonances and asynchronous disturbances the author encounters when a reminiscence is invoked by a particular configuration of material and temporal settings and intersections—and visually represented or inspired by the strange and haunting collection of colorless photographic way stations liberally sprinkled about the book, pictorial lodestars guiding, succoring, and tethering the reader at select points along the textual voyage—can be understood and evaluated in coevality by a large proportion of his readers—whatever their age, sex, or nationality—is a testament to the German's ability to perceive the universal inherent within the uncanny interactions of the past and the present upon unique individuals, and to access it through the subdued and temperate working of his words.

Such is the manner in which Sebald's writing subtly but palpably work upon the reader's emotions. I feel uneasy under the spell of his toneless inflection, infected with a piercing melancholy for all that has passed into shadow and will never again bloom strong and fulsome against the noonday sun; the brief passages about the squalid, boarded up, serrated roof tenement building standing like a rotted tooth in the Viennese jaw, or the ghostly flour factory dourly frowning upon the cluster of cluttered Italian renaissance in the Venetian lagoon, give me a peculiar shiver when I read them, exposing a nerve to some powerful current of existential angst, unearthing a deeply buried spiritual cavity where the life has been excavated in a manner similar to that of the natural world shattered and shifted and shaped to allow the imposition of our temporary temples to our tool-worshipping, technocultural, self-incarnated pantheon. Even when the story veers into a visit to Sebald's childhood home, the village of W. cradled at the foot of the Bavarian Alps, the characters and events recollected by the discomfited prodigal son are those of eccentricities, madnesses, depressions, and madcap antics that lead furiously towards an abyss eagerly anticipated as a release from the numbing inanity of the present. It is telling that the few intimations of human sexuality are those which have been either deeply repressed or proven of an ephemerality and futility, and that—in either case—have left their subject distressed and wounded; when Sebald recalls a heated tryst he witnessed whilst still a boy, the woman bent backwards and receiving the urgent thrusts seems more dead than alive, with eyes of a glassy mania that recall those of the crazed horses that have frightened the author for as long as he can remember. The novel's final sentence describes a London visited by a silent rain of ashes—it serves as an exquisitely apt summary of the contents of Vertigo: nature's cyclical bounty of the contents of tombs, the temporary structure of a temporal life that is perpetually being forgotten or altered even as it occurs.

Fritz Leiber once wrote about how he found a decrepit alleyway in the urban midnight, with its silent spray of wires, pipes, shuttered windows and peeling façades, far more terrifying than castles or forests or the roiling seas, and it has stuck with me ever since. Sebald not only agrees with Leiber, he works these fears upon the wheel of memory to spin his uniquely disquieting marriage of the inanimate with the animate, the lifeless with the lived, the crumbling with the dead; a macabre and elegiac epic theatre that in its prime seemed conceived and written by a brilliant and daring virtuoso, but with the passing of the years has progressively revealed itself as the disturbing and decayed vision of a madman. Few other writers can so casually-yet-masterfully access the angst inherent within the transient nature of humanity—its life and its works—as set against the conception of forward-moving time as this enigmatic German genius. ...more

flag 20 likes · Like · see review

Jun 11, 2020 Matthew Appleton rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: 1001-books-before-you-die, 20th-century, foreign-translated, read-2020, german-literature

93rd book of 2020.

Sebald traverses no land known to us. The names are familiar (Vienna, Venice, Verona…) but he is, in actuality, traversing his own mental landscape. We glimpse into it, the thin thread that weaves, not only across Europe, but his mind. Thoughts and images which appear to have no correlation begin to connect. A sense of order can be seen through chaos. Through reading we begin to also question what the blurb questions: What could possibly connect Stendhal’s unrequited love, the ...more

flag 19 likes · Like · see review

May 04, 2020 Deniz Urs rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Hatırlamak/unutmak.. Varolmak, gitmek istemek, gitmek ama gidememiş olmak.. Üslubu şimdiye kadar okuduklarıma benzemiyor. Paragraf, cümle yahut kelime aralarında; fotoğraf, küçük bir not, bir tren bileti, gidilen bir restaurantın alelade çekilmiş bir fotoğrafı gibi görsel ayrıntılar var. Ayrıntılara dikkat etmek gerekiyor öyküleri birleştirmek için. W.G Sebald keşfedilmeyi hak ediyor.

flag 18 likes · Like · see review

Dec 19, 2012 Drew rated it really liked it

I think there's a strong argument to be made that this is a five star book; Sebald will routinely, with a seemingly quotidian sentence, compel you to feel almost breathtaking pain and loneliness--it's a crazy trick. And the last several pages are jaw-dropping in a way I won't spoil. The front of my copy of Vertigo calls Sebald "memory's Einstein," and this pretty much has to be true since it's well established that Sebald can write a great book (or more than one) about what is essentially a walk I think there's a strong argument to be made that this is a five star book; Sebald will routinely, with a seemingly quotidian sentence, compel you to feel almost breathtaking pain and loneliness--it's a crazy trick. And the last several pages are jaw-dropping in a way I won't spoil. The front of my copy of Vertigo calls Sebald "memory's Einstein," and this pretty much has to be true since it's well established that Sebald can write a great book (or more than one) about what is essentially a walking tour, just by interpolating little historical or autobiographical side notes.

So why the vertigo? Well, vertigo is really just a change in perspective--it's what happens when you've been looking at the ground beneath your feet, but then are forced to notice the immeasurable chasm two feet to the left. And it's an apt metaphor for what the book does; it wrenches you from your narrow perspective of history or geography or the human psyche, and forces you to confront a broader one: the madness of large-scale battle, or the effect of a secret rape on a small town, or the loneliness of maybe never being able to know love. A couple demonstrative quotes:

"There is something peculiarly dispiriting about the emptiness that wells up when, in a strange city, one dials the same telephone numbers in vain. If no one answers, it is a disappointment of huge significance, quite as if these few random ciphers were a matter of life and death. So what else could I do, when I had put the coins that jingled out of the box back into my pocket, but wander aimlessly around until well into the night."

Or, from near the end, on a train trip: "There was no room for doubt, however, about the reality of my poor fellow travelers, who had all set off early that morning neatly turned out and spruced up, but were now slumped in their seats like a defeated army and, before they turned to their newspapers, were staring out at the desolate forecourts of the metropolis with fixed unseeing eyes."

And my big problem with Vertigo and maybe even Sebald in general is this incorrigible, pervasive, European-style world-weary fatalism. A wise viewpoint from an older person, especially a European (Sebald's historical reveries provide good evidence for fatalism as a philosophy, or at least I thought so), and in fact he makes it pretty hard to argue with him without sounding like a petulant American child. But you know what?

I reject fatalism. I don't believe that what we have is the best we're going to get. I don't just want wisdom; I want truth. I don't just want sex; I want love. I don't just want law; I want justice. And I refuse to believe that these things can't be found. I claim the right to bite off more than I can chew, and to gleefully spit it all back into the sneering faces of the naysayers. I claim the right to disturb the comfortable, and in return I will do my best to comfort the disturbed. And though I am cynical, I cannot--will not--let cynicism govern my actions.

And when I'm older and smarter and inevitably have accomplished so much less than I expected, I'll come back and read this again, and I'll doubtless find Sebald to be better company.

...more

flag 17 likes · Like · see review

Jan 27, 2020 Lito rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Υποκλίνομαι στο ταλέντο αυτού του ανθρώπου...

flag 18 likes · Like · see review

Nov 21, 2010 Jimmy rated it it was amazing

Shelves: male, germany, poetic-essay, year-1990s, my-canon

"He had no answers, but believed the questions were quite sufficient" (p. 62)

Now I have read all of Sebald's four major "novels". I feel, as I often do after reading Sebald, unable to say anything meaningful about his work, even though I was deeply moved while reading him. It seems funny to me, in retrospect, that I didn't especially like Rings of Saturn, the first book of his I read. I'm sure if I return to it now I will love it. His writing goes to the edge of so many things that it is easy to

"He had no answers, but believed the questions were quite sufficient" (p. 62)

Now I have read all of Sebald's four major "novels". I feel, as I often do after reading Sebald, unable to say anything meaningful about his work, even though I was deeply moved while reading him. It seems funny to me, in retrospect, that I didn't especially like Rings of Saturn, the first book of his I read. I'm sure if I return to it now I will love it. His writing goes to the edge of so many things that it is easy to imagine one not liking it if they just aren't in the mood for this type of stuff, though lately I have been all about this type of stuff.

Since I am again unable to say anything meaningful, I wanted to transcribe what I wrote about Sebald in my notebook while sitting in the park a few weeks ago:

The problem with most writing is that it tries to do so much and what it tries to do is so predictable and in the same mode. I want a literature that is not trying to say anything, not the intention constantly hounding at every word. How to write for the barely visible? How to make it not seem significant, at least not in the normal ways? Approaching BOREDOM that is the goal. Even achieving boredom, which is a task--boredom that is not the result of boring writing--boredom which is carefully manufactured boredom in the reader which is a kind of constant attentiveness--a state of unease where the reader is potentially responsible for everything.

Deliberately slowing down the pace, not deliberately beautiful, as if an accident. Signifiers not bundled together like a thesis--a sort of rambling that defies easy 'purpose', allowing the person speaking to be the only common element, that voice and his concerns which is larger than the piece of writing, that goes on afterward and was going on before, that the writing becomes a sort of artifact of his thinking & materializing perspective without DEFINING him, without concluding anything without easyness of "saying".

It is not that it lacked significance, it's that the words did not create that significance. The words were like a rag, already soaked in whatever mysterious significance it needed--so that the words themselves didn't have to try to convey anything. The attention is focused back to the basic attention of the sentence, its parts taken simply which becomes a feat astounding by itself. To read every sentence as if it were the only sentence in the English language. To make a reader read it that way. How?

I'd like to append that I do not completely stand behind all these thoughts, they are just jottings I made without time to revise or think through. Nonetheless, Sebald was on my mind when I was thinking about these subjects. Also interesting is this article I read about Sebald, in which I quote:

It is clear that his work was as unfinished as it was original. And odd. It was work of high seriousness without pretension. That is, it engaged with many of the great themes of the literature and art of the past: war, peace, life, death, art itself, memory, absence, omission. But almost as prominent was—for a writer with such high regard for the history of individuals—the almost total absence of such concerns as love, sex, family, children; or of such ordinary (and powerful) emotions as jealousy, hatred, love (again) or greed.

It is interesting that I never thought about what was omitted in his writings, which are very familiar themes in other writer's works. I would also add that "love" in that quote above should probably be amended to "romantic love", since he does convey a lot of friendship and deep connections between (usually neglected) people, as well as familial love. And also absent is humor, though there are glimpses where you can tell he was highly attuned to humor, but that his main concern, at least in his writings, lay elsewhere.

I would like to say something about his technique of embedding images within his narrative, but I fear I have not thought it through enough to say anything interesting yet. Perhaps that will be something I can think about on a re-read, which I plan to do very soon, starting with Rings of Saturn.

One last thing that I wanted to mention, and this is going out on a limb, is that it would be interesting to study the parallels between Sebald and Bolano. From the limited Bolano that I've read, I feel like they are approaching the same subjects and big questions from completely different angles and writing styles. Which means I should probably read more Bolano, since I also did not love the first (and only) Bolano I've read (2666). I will end with a quote from the book itself, since I have already rambled on long enough:

"The more images I gathered from the past, I said, the more unlikely it seemed to me that the past had actually happened in this or that way, for nothing about it could be called normal: most of it was absurd, and if not absurd, then appalling." (p. 212)

...more

flag 15 likes · Like · see review

Jan 13, 2018 Özgür Daş rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: can-yayınları, kitaplığım

W. G. Sebald kendimi bulduğum ender yazarlardan biri. Yapıtlarında genel olarak geçmişin izlerini arayan, içsel düşünceleriyle gerçeği yoğuran bunu fotoğraflar, mektuplar, belgeler vs. gibi materyallerle destekleyen kimseye benzemez tarzı olan bir yazar. Kanaatimce Proust, Joyce vb. yazarların seviyesinde bir isim.

Vertigo'da Sebald yine geçmişin peşine düşüyor. Avusturya, İtalya ve Almanya'da geçmişin izlerini sürüyor; ilk öykü büyük Fransız yazar Henri Beyle Stendhal'in imgelerindeki bozulmalar ...more

flag 17 likes · Like · see review

Jan 06, 2018 M. Sarki rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: 5-star-wonders

It seemed remarkable to me the ease in which I sped through this book. Not that I understood it all, I did not. Even though the translation I read was in English, the writing still felt foreign to me. The words for people and places, and even things, were unfamiliar, and from time to time I would skip back a few pages to see if I had missed something important in my understanding of this dream. Reading this felt like a dream. And often I would find myself pages ahead to somewhere I failed to und It seemed remarkable to me the ease in which I sped through this book. Not that I understood it all, I did not. Even though the translation I read was in English, the writing still felt foreign to me. The words for people and places, and even things, were unfamiliar, and from time to time I would skip back a few pages to see if I had missed something important in my understanding of this dream. Reading this felt like a dream. And often I would find myself pages ahead to somewhere I failed to understand how I could have gotten to. There have been enough moments in my life on the road when I have felt the same way. The many miles I drove each day found me in places I knew I needed to be but hadn't a memory of getting there. It was if the car had driven itself. My mind would wander. The experience was similar to reading Max Sebald's Vertigo.

Others have claimed the same dream-experience regarding this book. It could go without saying that I will read this book again, most likely after I have read all four of the major Sebald works. It is comforting to me, the manner in which he writes. The way in which Sebald introduces something almost nonchalantly and then offers a treatise on the subject. But not exactly, because as soon as you get comfortable in this new direction his text has taken he swerves off the road again naturally, as if he meant to, and with such great skill the move feels not frightening at all.

I am envious of the way in which Sebald records his memories. The grace in his athleticism on the page is nothing short of astounding. He is so coordinated in these actions. And the photographs add so much even if they are blurred and out of focus, tired and crumbling from years of being stored on dusty shelves in boxes tied in knots of twine and wire gauged in oil and overuse. A language foreign, but lined in memory, familiar but uncanny, and sounding out the truth he makes believable in my own world today, rife with its own skeptical and judgmental versions of a country's patriotic morals and delusional beliefs of superiority. Sebald instead adds to the growing number of this member group of like-minds against, but holds dear his own position of autonomy. And though the leaders of this memory-movement are mostly all dead, their numbers are expanding, daily, and with a fervor, in my mind, bordering on nothing short of something quite delightful. The insanity of made-time. ...more

flag 13 likes · Like · see review

Jan 15, 2012 Jim rated it it was amazing

Shelves: fiction, 20th-century-lit

Perhaps one of the reasons I do not read as many contemporary writers is that I find myself somewhat at sea as each one works his or her own strange magic on me. There is something comforting about reading a Balzac or a Trollope. I know their worlds and feel at home in them. Poor W G Sebald, on the other hand, suffers from a sense of Vertigo as he travels around Europe, bringing up memories and strange historico-literary coincidences involving Stendhal, Kafka, Casanova and others -- and many som ...more

flag 12 likes · Like · see review

Nov 28, 2016 Elena Sala rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: european-contemporary, sebald, german-literature, historical-fiction

VERTIGO is a novel about disillusionment and trauma. It is difficult, though, to call "novel" this unclassifiable text. Sebald used the term "prose narrative" to describe it, and I believe fictional travelogue is also a good description of it.

VERTIGO has very strong autobiographical elements, and it consists of four pieces which involve travel across the Alps. As usual, the narrator is a depressed, solitary wanderer, a writer who is fond of solitude and meditates on unknown details of obscure li ...more

flag 12 likes · Like · see review

Aug 26, 2016 Sophia rated it liked it · review of another edition

Recommended to Sophia by: Alexandra

Shelves: borrowed, greek-translations, 4-brace-2017

2,5 στα 3 ⭐κανονικά αλλά λόγω εορτών νιώθω γενναιόδωρη! Για την κατηγορία B.R.A.CE. 2017 ένα βιβλίο που δανείστηκες και περαστικά μου!
Το βιβλίο έχει 4 ιστορίες. Και στις 4 βρήκα κάτι. Κυρίως έναν ταξιδευτή, έναν άνθρωπο που με διάφορα ερεθίσματα θυμόταν και περιέγραφε γεγονότα και άτομα του παρελθόντος. Ο συγγραφέας είχε μια μικρή εμμονή ( έτσι μου φάνηκε εμένα ) με οδούς και πως και από που πήγαινε όπου πήγαινε.

Δεν είμαι ικανή να πιάσω βαθύτερα νοήματα και παραλληλισμούς και να κατ 2,5 στα 3 ⭐κανονικά αλλά λόγω εορτών νιώθω γενναιόδωρη! Για την κατηγορία B.R.A.CE. 2017 ένα βιβλίο που δανείστηκες και περαστικά μου!
Το βιβλίο έχει 4 ιστορίες. Και στις 4 βρήκα κάτι. Κυρίως έναν ταξιδευτή, έναν άνθρωπο που με διάφορα ερεθίσματα θυμόταν και περιέγραφε γεγονότα και άτομα του παρελθόντος. Ο συγγραφέας είχε μια μικρή εμμονή ( έτσι μου φάνηκε εμένα ) με οδούς και πως και από που πήγαινε όπου πήγαινε.

Δεν είμαι ικανή να πιάσω βαθύτερα νοήματα και παραλληλισμούς και να καταλάβω το "τι εννοεί ο συγγραφέας". Ξέρω να πω πως λίγο ζορίστηκα (στην ιστορία All'estero περισσότερο ) αλλά γενικά "κύλησε". Μου άρεσαν οι "αναμνήσεις" και οι αναδρομές, σαν μικρά κουτσομπολιά που λένε οι άνθρωποι μεταξύ τους "Θυμάσαι τον τάδε που και όταν"

Δεν θα βιαστώ να διαβάσω κι άλλο δικό του, αλλά θα του δώσω κι άλλη ευκαιρία αν βρεθεί στο δρόμο μου.

Το μεγάλο μου πρόβλημα ήταν με την έκδοση. ΟΚ να δεχτώ πως οι σημειώσεις είναι στο τέλος (δεν μου αρέσει, αλλά το δέχομαι. μου την δίνει το μπρος πίσω) αλλά να υπάρχει ένα σημάδι, κάτι που να υπονοεί ότι αυτή η λέξη π.χ. έχει σημείωση. Είχαν διατηρηθεί κάποιες ιταλικές φράσεις από τις οποίες κάποιες είχαν εξήγηση στο τέλος και κάποιες άλλες όχι. WTF! Αυτό το "σετάρισμα" με εκνεύρισε αρκετά. ...more

flag 16 likes · Like · see review

Nov 12, 2015 Sophie rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Πρόκειται για ένα έργο που αναπτύσσεται με τη μέθοδο ροής συνείδησης, με αποτέλεσμα η αφήγηση να δομείται με σπονδυλωτό τρόπο, ενώ το ένα συμβάν ανακαλεί στη μνήμη του ήρωα ένα άλλο, προσδίδοντας, έτσι, μια αλληλουχία στα κεφάλαια, τα οποία φαινομενικά δε συνδέονται μεταξύ τους. Η πρόζα του Sebald θυμίζει όνειρο, ζαλίζει και θολώνει τα όρια μεταξύ πραγματικότητας και ψευδαίσθησης, αληθινού και πλασματικού. Παράλληλα, η χρήση εικόνων δίνει μια μοναδική ζωντάνια κι αληθοφάνεια στο κείμενο.

This par ...more

flag 12 likes · Like · see review

Jun 05, 2016 Hakan rated it really liked it · review of another edition

kitap stendhal, kafka ve yazar sebald'a dair dört metinden oluşuyor. bu metinler kitabın adının kısmen karşıladığı bir merkezde birleşiyor. ama asıl önemli olan bu metinlerin yapısı. her ne kadar öykü diye sunulsa da gerçekle kurgunun iç içe geçtiği metinler bunlar. bilinç, bellek, zaman sorgulanıyor her birinde. bilmek, hatırlamak-unutmak, düşlemek...sebald bu temalar etrafında kendi edebiyatını kurmuş, edebiyatın ötesinde avrupa düşüncesini etkilemiş bir yazar. zorlayıcı, ufuk açıcı. okunmalı.

flag 12 likes · Like · see review

Ed rated it it was amazing
Feb 11, 2007

Alberto added it
Feb 28, 2007

Farron rated it really liked it
Mar 07, 2007

Tyler rated it it was amazing
Mar 13, 2007

tanvi rated it really liked it
Mar 13, 2007

Eliot rated it it was amazing
Mar 14, 2007

Kelly Sherman rated it it was amazing
Mar 19, 2007

judy is currently reading it
Mar 22, 2007

Anna marked it as to-read
Mar 23, 2007

Apr 03, 2007 Patrick rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Recommends it for: Anyone interested in thoughtful, German literature

I have learned that German writers think about memory a lot and Kafka. He pervades everything. So I hope you like Kafka.

flag 1 like · Like · see review

William Shoemaker rated it really liked it
Apr 11, 2007

Kevin rated it really liked it
May 08, 2007

Dan rated it really liked it
May 16, 2007

Kristie rated it really liked it
May 23, 2007

May 24, 2007 Ariel rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Recommends it for: People interested in memory and poetry

Like all of Siebald's books, this one plays heavily on memory and most specifically it's fluidness and lack of real stability. The story is split into several parts, some seem to be sort of memoirish and some appear to be recollections expanded upon from other writers experiences. All take place "away from home" and they overlap in places and sometimes people. I keep saying "appear" and "seem" because as with the other Siebald I've read I'm never entirely sure what is going on. For me it is like ...more

flag Like · see review

Chile marked it as to-read
May 30, 2007

Danny rated it really liked it
Jun 05, 2007

Lee Klein rated it really liked it
Jun 11, 2007

Ewa rated it really liked it
Jun 25, 2007

Irena rated it liked it
Jul 09, 2007

Matthew Retoske rated it liked it
Jul 14, 2007

Marina rated it liked it
Jul 14, 2007

Charles rated it really liked it
Jul 15, 2007

Anna rated it liked it
Jul 19, 2007

Yvonne rated it really liked it
Jul 24, 2007

Mishka rated it it was amazing
Aug 02, 2007

Mike rated it it was amazing
Aug 03, 2007

Amira Hanafi marked it as to-read
Aug 06, 2007

Shane rated it liked it
Aug 06, 2007

Meridith rated it really liked it
Aug 11, 2007

topics	posts	views	last activity
Reading 1001: Vertigo by W.G. Sebald	3	13	Jun 19, 2020 10:40PM
All About Books: Vertigo by W.G. Sebald (Dhanaraj, Gill, Laura,Diane S. & Jenny)	128	47	Jun 14, 2014 05:11AM

See a Problem?

Preview — Vertigo by W.G. Sebald

Vertigo

Get A Copy

Friend Reviews

Reader Q&A

Lists with This Book

Community Reviews

new topic
Discuss This Book

Readers also enjoyed

Genres

About W.G. Sebald

Books by W.G. Sebald

Related Articles

Trivia About Vertigo

Quotes from Vertigo

See a Problem?

Preview — Vertigo by W.G. Sebald

Vertigo

Get A Copy

Friend Reviews

Reader Q&A

Lists with This Book

Community Reviews

new topicDiscuss This Book

Readers also enjoyed

Genres

About W.G. Sebald

Books by W.G. Sebald

Related Articles

Trivia About Vertigo

Quotes from Vertigo

new topic
Discuss This Book