W.G. Sebald

(1944 - 2001)

Born in Wertach im Allgäu, Germany, in 1944, W.G. Sebald later said of his post–World War II childhood, “It seemed to me the natural condition of cities, houses between mountains of rubble.” He published three works of fiction in the 1990s: The Emigrants, The Rings of Saturn, and Vertigo. Sebald died in a car crash near his home in England in 2001, shortly after his fourth novel, Austerlitz, appeared. Based on a series of lectures given by Sebald, On the Natural History of Destruction was published posthumously in 2003.