SEBALD, W.G. Vertigo New York, New Directions Books, 1999
8vo. Orignial quarter green over grey cloth boards; green endpapers; Original illustrated dust jacket depicting a collage of images including a volcano with black and white lettering; pp. [4] 3-263 [3]; fine.
First Edition, Signed by the author to title page
Vertgio is the first, and argubaly most autobiographical, novel by the highly acclaimed German writer W.G Sebald. Split into four parts, the novel follows the trajectory of an unanmed narrator as he journeys into a past that does not always belong to him.
Merging together the stories of Stendhal's unrequited love, the trials of Franz Kafka in Italy, a series of murders by a clandestine organisation and Casonova's imprisonment in Venice alongside Sebald's compicated return to his Bavarian childhood village, this multifaceted masperpiece explores the unreliability of memory- a theme persistent throughout his unique work body. As Susan Sontag wrote, "Where has one heard in English a voice of such confidence and precision, so direct in its expression of feeling, yet so respectfully devoted to "the real"?".
W.G Sebald died at the premautre age of 57 due to heart complications whilst driving. As a memorial to the writer, in the town of Wertach there is an eleven kilometre long walkway called the "Sebaldweg". The route is that which is taken by the narrator of Vertigo . Six steles have been constructed along the route bearing texts from Vertigo and also reference to the victims of World War, two of Sebald's main themes- memory and destruction.
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