| Campo Santo Contributor(s): Sebald, W. G. (Author), Bell, Anthea (Translator) |
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ISBN: 0812972325 ISBN-13: 9780812972320 Publisher: Penguin Random House LLC (No Starch) OUR PRICE: $16.15 Product Type: Paperback - Other Formats Published: February 2006 Annotation: In this final collection of sixteen essays by W. G. Sebald, one of the most elegant and incisive authors of our time, all of his trademark themes are contained-the power of memory and personal history, the connections between images in the arts and life, the presence of ghosts in places and artifacts. Four pieces pay tribute to the Mediterranean island of Corsica, weaving elegiacally between past and present. In "A Little Excursion to Ajaccio," Sebald visits the birthplace of Napoleon and muses on the hints in his childhood home of a great man's future. Inspired by an Italian cemetery, "Campo Santo" is a reverie on death, ranging from the ambiguity of inscriptions to the size of and adornment of gravestones to the blood-soaked legend of Saint Julien. Sebald also examines how the works of Gunter Grass and Heinrich Boll reveal "the grave and lasting deformities in the emotional lives" of postwar Germans, how Kafka echoes Sebald's own interest in spirit presences among mortal beings, and how literature can be an attempt at restitution for the injustices of the real world. Dazzling in its erudition, accessible in its deep emotion, "Campo Santo confirms Sebald's place beside Proust and Nabokov, great writers who perceive the invisible connections that determine our lives. "From the Hardcover edition. |
| Additional Information |
| BISAC Categories: - Literary Collections | Essays - Literary Criticism | European - German - Literary Criticism | Subjects & Themes - General |
| Dewey: 834.914 |
| LCCN: 2006273423 |
| Series: Modern Library Paperbacks |
| Physical Information: 0.53" H x 5.26" W x 8.1" (0.38 lbs) 240 pages |
| Themes: - Cultural Region - Germany |
| Descriptions, Reviews, Etc. |
| Publisher Description: "W. G. Sebald exemplified the best kind of cosmopolitan literary intelligence-humane, digressive, deeply erudite, unassuming and tinged with melancholy. . . . In Campo Santo] Sebald reveals his distinctive tone, as his winding sentences gradually mingle together curiosity and plangency, learning and self-revelation. . . . Readers will] be rewarded with unexpected illuminations." -The Washington Post Book World This final collection of essays by W. G. Sebald offers profound ruminations on many themes common to his work-the power of memory and personal history, the connections between images in the arts and life, the presence of ghosts in places and artifacts. Some of these pieces pay tribute to the Mediterranean island of Corsica, weaving elegiacally between past and present, examining, among other things, the island's formative effect on its most famous citizen, Napoleon. In others, Sebald examines how the works of G nter Grass and Heinrich B ll reveal "the grave and lasting deformities in the emotional lives" of postwar Germans; how Kafka echoes Sebald's own interest in spirit presences among mortal beings; and how literature can be an attempt at restitution for the injustices of the real world. Dazzling in its erudition, accessible in its deep emotion, Campo Santo confirms Sebald's status as one of the great modern writers who divined and expressed the invisible connections that determine our lives. |