On the Natural History of Destruction (Modern Library Classics) (Modern Library Classics (Paperback)) - Softcover

Winfried Georg Sebald

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0375756574 ISBN 13: 9780375756573

Publisher: Modern Library Inc, 2004

Synopsis

NEW STATESMAN BOOK OF THE YEAR 2009. During World War Two, 131 German cities and towns were targeted by Allied bombs, a good number almost entirely flattened. Six hundred thousand German civilians died a figure twice that of all American war casualties. Seven and a half million Germans were left homeless. Given the astonishing scope of the devastation, W. G. Sebald asks, why does the subject occupy so little space in Germany s cultural memory? On the Natural History of Destruction probes deeply into this ominous silence.

About this title

Review:

Most writers, even good ones, write of what can be written. . . . The very greatest write of what cannot be written. . . . I think of Akhmatova and Primo Levi, for example, and of W. G. Sebald. The New York Times [Sebald] is writing about what he regards as a disquieting refusal to face facts--not only about what was done to the nation, but by implication, by the nation. . . . No better future for humankind is possible if we do less than look upon the crimes of our past, and their catastrophic results, with 'a steadfast gaze.'The Boston Sunday Globe. This may well be the last of Sebald's writing we'll ever have, so how amazing--and fitting--it is that it seems, in a fashion as uncanny as his prose and perceptions could often be, to close the circle of the ruminations that preoccupied his writing life. The Washington Post. Sebald approaches his subject with sensitivity, yet avoids neither descriptions of horrible carnage nor criticism of writers too preoccupied with absolving themselves of blame to faithfully portray a destroyed Germany. The result is a balanced explication of devastation and denial, and a beautiful coda for Sebald. The secret of Sebald's appeal is that he saw himself in what now seems almost an old-fashioned way as a voice of conscience, someone who remembers injustice, who speaks for those who can no longer speak. --The New York Review of Books

Published in English after the author's untimely death in 2001... Sebald's essay on the 1943 bombing of Hamburg asks how to capture true horror when all human expression tends towards the norm. --Lesley Chamberlain, New Statesman Books of the Year 2009

Synopsis:

During World War Two, 131 German cities and towns were targeted by Allied bombs, a good number almost entirely flattened. Six hundred thousand German civilians died - a figure twice that of all American war casualties. Seven and a half million Germans were left homeless. Given the astonishing scope of the devastation, W. G. Sebald asks, why does the subject occupy so little space in Germany's cultural memory? On the Natural History of Destruction probes deeply into this ominous silence.

About this edition

• Publisher: Modern Library Inc
• Publication date: 2004
• ISBN 10: 0375756574
• ISBN 13: 9780375756573
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 224