Austerlitz

It seems chiefly to be a book about memory and a book about descriptive detail, it's cluttered with both. The two, I suppose, are intimately linked. Austerlitz, the troubled protagonist, seeking clues to his early childhood and what became of his parents before he arrived in Wales as a five year old refugee from Prague's German occupation, it has to be said, speaks with a mesmerising aptitude for description from memory. Only the vital ones somehow elude or are too distant. His attempts to re-surface and fix these personal recollections together with the historic facts become his obsession; retracing his steps across Europe, scrutinising every document and structure and street name.Austerlitz's familiar memories of a childhood growing up in Wales are particularly evocative. The later, more speculative, ruminative passages crowded with impersonal description of architecture, and vague, if poetic, reflections on landscape and mundane minutiae, for me, meander too long. What began as a free-flowing iridescent river of memories empties into a turbid estuary of standing water. Though it’s not at all trivial, let me add, and often thought-provoking. Only something to admire rather than connect to.This sense of detachment is only enhanced by Sebald's trick of having Austerlitz tell his story to a narrator in numerous conversations, over the years, across different locations. It's got a whiff of the old Wedding Guest/Ancient Mariner set up, except this yarn is considerably more tortuous and interminable by comparison. The narrator's patience and attentiveness rather beggars belief.

I really enjoyed this book, very different to anything I’ve read before. I decided to buy it having seen it in the Guardian’s top 100 books of the 21st century (it ranked no.5). It was written by a professor at my university, I think I even attended a lecture by him once. I wish I’d known then what a wonderful book he’d written and wish I could have told him so. Sadly he passed away shortly after I graduated. (Which was in the 90s, so surely the book was 20th century not the 21st?). I thoroughly recommend it.

Novel? Memoir? Biography ? History?There are no categories for this unique reflection of a classic European 20th century journey.Austerlitz is a person , a place, a photograph. We accompany the eponymous hero travelling across Europe in search of a hidden self, uncovering layers of meaning, a departure for home. A moving meditation on time and identity, both of its time and outside it, an original and resonating work.

An astonishing book, that breaks all the rules, and left me actually weeping when I finsihed and closed itk. I'm so grateful that my friend Ian insisted that I read it, and I've quickly gone on to read everything else that Sebald wrote. Ive been busily buying copies for my family and friends since then, and have been rereading too. I can't praise this book and this writer enough

I found it very hard work and I did not finish it - but was relieved that others in my book group confessed to the same. The very wordy style, using reported speech and labouring every statement really annoyed me and my interest in the main characters quickly waned. It was disappointing as the book came highly recommended.