Publisher edition artwork
The Rings of Saturn
W. G. Sebald · First published 1995
A walk along the Suffolk coast that becomes a meditation on everything that has been lost.
For Enthusiasts
Demanding · Medium — around 300 pages
Why Read It?
It permanently changes the pace at which you read and, briefly, the pace at which you walk.
What It's About
A narrator's walking tour of the Suffolk coast, interleaved with historical digressions and photographs.
Why It Matters
Sebald invented a form — part essay, part fiction, part archive — that a generation of writers has since imitated.
The Review
Sebald walks, and while walking digresses into silk worms, Rembrandt's anatomy lesson, the herring fishery, the bombing of Germany and the Empress Dowager. There is no plot and the grainy black-and-white photographs are unexplained. It should not work; it is one of the great books of the late twentieth century.
This is a demanding, unhurried pleasure — the literary equivalent of a long grey afternoon, and best owned in a well-made edition you will return to.
Best Read
Slowly, in bad weather, with no expectation of narrative.
Three Things You'll Take From It
- 01
Digression can be a structure rather than a failure of one.
- 02
Decline is Sebald's only real subject and he finds it everywhere.
- 03
The photographs are evidence and misdirection at once.
Better Read or Heard?
Print only — the photographs are half the book.
If You Like This…
Austerlitz — W. G. Sebald
The most novel-like of his books.
Find it on AmazonDanube — Claudio Magris
A river treated the same way.
Find it on Amazon
The Edition to Own
The New Directions and Vintage editions both reproduce the photographs adequately; a good hardback is worth the premium for the plates.
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