SEBALD, W.G. [trans. Anthea Bell] On the Natural History of Destruction London, Hamish Hamilton, 2003
8vo. Original black boards with gilt lettering on spine and publisher's device; illustrated grey and blue dust wrapper; blue endpapers[4] 5-196 [1] ads ix [9]; fine copy.
The first of Sebald's non-fiction books to be translated to English, the original German title of On The Natural History of Destruction was Luftkrieg und Literatur, translating as "Air War and Literature". This formidable book consists of a variety of essays about literature and writers, a conduit through which Sebald analyses the German processing of WWII. Sebald examines the psychological aftermath of the bombings by Allied Forces and raises the pertinent question of why such trauma has been left absent from collective memory- what he describes as a sinister societal amnesia.
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