From acclaimed critic, novelist and academic W. G. Sebald, author of Austerlitz and The Rings of Saturn, a collection of essay on the Austrian writers who meant so much to him
''A writer whose life and work has become a wonderful vindication of literary culture in all its subtle and entrancing complexity'' Guardian
Silent Catastrophes brings together for the first time in English the two books W.G. Sebald wrote on the Austrian writers who meant so much to him: The Description of Misfortune and Strange Homeland, published in Austria in 1985 and 1991.
As a German in self-chosen exile from his country of birth, Sebald found a particular affinity with these writers from a neighbouring nation. The traumatic evolution of Austria from vast empire to diminutive Alpine republic, followed by its annexation by Germany, meant that concepts such as -home/land-, -borderland- and -exile- occupy a prominent role in its literature
