Rings of Saturn

«This German who has lived in England for over thirty years is one of the most mysteriously sublime of contemporary writers. . . . And here, in The Rings of Saturn, is a book more uncanny than The Emigrants.»

«The book is like a dream you want to last  translation from the German seems little short  of miraculous. The book is so natural and  accessible, and yet so odd, that one is left  enchanted and also curious about the author, who presents such a prodigious mass of material in  such a modest and engaging way. As you read  along, and as you become an active participant  in the unfolding of this book.»

«Sebald has been writing what I give the unpromising name the documentary novel, in which subject matter becomes character. A future critic with considerably more time and space will find Anglia. Seen from above, his footsteps will describe, like the good detective he is, the outline of a body that has many times been ferried away, the body we call civilization. From these fading contours left upon the land, we Lilliputians are left to ponder the shape of what came yesterday, or centuries before. to such puzzling terrain, is indispensable.»

«Like his much praised novel The Emigrants, this new work by Sebald is steeped in melancholy.... Erudition of this sort is too rare in American fiction, but the hypnotic appeal here has as much to do with Sebalds deft portrait of the subtle, complex relations between individual experience and the rich human firmament that gives it meaning as it does with his remarkable mastery of history.»

«As he did so brilliantly in The Emigrants, German author Sebald once again blurs the boundaries between fact and fiction in traveling narrator is making his way through the county of Suffolk, England, and from there back in time.»

«[A]lways clear and present—always ringing true, not necessarily comfortable but not easily forgotten.»

«[A]n extraordinary palimpsest of nature, human, and literary history.»

«One of 'Five Best [of the year].' Historical fiction of the first rank.»

«It is full of wonderfully rendered scenes…. Full of insight and beauty…. Tragic, yet beautiful.»

«Sebald depicts a landscape that is fascinating and disturbing, a world whose minute differences from the actual is a bit of virtuoso reality. If I might be so bold as to sum up his work in one sentence, it is this: Time always wins, but offers as a consolation and booby prize, Memory. Thus the futility of existence is partially erased by both the grandeur and inability of our imaginations. We can dream. And somewhere in those dreams, reality is defeated.»

«He is the most hypnotic and exhilarating author. Lyrical and genius. No one like him.»