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Vertigo

W. G. Sebald

1990232 pagesabout 4–5 hours
1990
first published
  • 1990New Directions Books · 278 pages · ENG
  • 1999Harvill Press · 272 pagesISBN 9781860466243
  • 2000Harvill · 263 pages · ENGISBN 9781860467349
  • 2000New Directions Books · 263 pages · ENGISBN 9780811214858
  • 2000New Directions Pub. · 263 pages · ENGISBN 9780811214308
  • 2003Penguin Random House · 272 pages · ENGISBN 9780099448891
  • 2009Editorial Anagrama · 232 pagesISBN 9788433975232
  • 2016New Directions · 272 pages · ENGISBN 9780811226165

"An unnamed narrator, beset by nervous ailments, is our guide on a hair-raising journey across Europe and into the past. Vertigo is a book in four parts. The opening section is devoted to Stendhal's memories of joining Napoleon's army as a very young man just when it invaded Italy. The second section centers on Casanova's horrible imprisonment in Venice. The third part follows Kafka's tribulations in Italy; and the fourth part chronicles, in an intensely moving fashion, Sebald's own return to his childhood home in a small Bavarian village. Everywhere he encounters self-alienation and the unreliability of memory: "what it is that undoes a writer.""--BOOK JACKET.

When and where

ThemesMemory
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