Volume 44, Number 14 · September 25, 1997
Ghosts
By Gabriele Annan
The Emigrants
by W.G. Sebald, translated by Michael Hulse
New Directions, 237 pp., $10.95 (paper)
The Emigrants consists of four short biographies told in the first person by the author. Perhaps 'displaced persons' or the French dépaysés would better describe these men, who are without the sense of purpose, of going somewhere, implicit in the word 'emigrant.' (To be pedantic: the German for 'emigrants' is Auswanderer, suggesting people on the move. Die Ausgewanderten—Sebald's original German title—means people who once emigrated.) Sebald's four men aren't going anywhere. They have reached the end of the road. His book is tragic, stunningly beautiful, strange, and haunting. What makes it beautiful is the fastidious prose with its sad resigned rhythm—as appealing and hypnotic in Michael Hulse's English translation as in the German original; and also Sebald's wonderfully desolate landscapes and townscapes, where depression rises like mist from quite factual, unemphatic descriptions of people and things.
Review, 3278 words
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