The Emigrants

Reading a novel by W. G. Sebald is unlike reading anything else. Sebald’s narrators like to take walks, and it is through these walks that Sebald unfurls his narratives, equal parts natural and social history, physical geography, memoir, and character study, revealed through plot and exposition. Sebald is particularly skilled at moving from one narrative thread to another, sometimes related, other times not, and eventually circling back around, without ever exposing the stitching.