The Emigrants by W.G. Sebald - 4 stars (Subdue)

[Joy D]

The Emigrants by W.G. Sebald - 4* - My Review

Published in 1992, this book tells the separate stories of four people known by the unnamed narrator (possibly a stand-in for the author). Taken together, they reflect the impact of historical forces in the aftermath of WWII. The first story focuses on the narrator’s friend, Dr. Selwyn, an emigrant to London from Lithuania. The second tells of the narrator’s primary schoolteacher, Paul Bereyter, who fights in the German Army despite being a quarter Jewish. The third relates the story of the narrator’s Great Uncle Ambros Adelwarth, who emigrated to America. The fourth deals with the narrator’s friend, Max Ferber, an artist, whose work has grown in popularity when the two meet after two and a half decades apart.

Though the Holocaust is never specifically mentioned, it looms in the background of these characters’ lives. The stories are interspersed with photographs and journal entries. The tone is melancholic. Common themes include memory, cultural displacement, loneliness, the lingering impact of traumatic events on a person’s mental health. The writing is almost mesmerizing in its somber beauty. It is a book that kept me looking for subtle connections among the four stories. It is a memorable work.