Within a few years, and in four books — The Emigrants (1996), The Rings of Saturn (1998), Vertigo (1999) and Austerlitz (2001) — W. G. Sebald achieved a reputation as a major international author. He was tipped for the Nobel, seen to supply heartening proof that ‘greatness in literature is still possible’ (John Banville) and that ‘literary greatness is still possible’ (Susan Sontag).
Literary greatness it seemed, at times, was Sebald, and for a while after the publication of The Rings of Saturn, it was hard to find a work of fictive non-fiction that wasn’t riddled with grainy photographs of dubious quality integrated into the text. Despite Sebald’s sudden death in 2001 his publishing career has continued — and he is now as prolific in death as he was in life, with works including On the Natural History of Destruction (2003), Unrecounted (2004), Campo Santo (2005) as well as two collections of poems, For Years Now (2001) and Across the Land and the Water (2012).
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