The Emigrants

W. G. Sebald · 1944–2001 · Germany / England

Originally Die Ausgewanderten (German) · translated by Michael Hulse

Why it matters

Four displaced lives: quiet, photographed, ruined at long distance by the German catastrophe. The book that announced Sebald's method: the Holocaust approached only obliquely, and all the more devastating for it.

At a glance

Long unbroken paragraphs interleaved with unexplained photographs across four life stories.