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Title: Seamless of visual facts and mental fictions
Review: Never has an author made better use of visual images than did Sebald. The photos have a degree of immediacy that removes the distance that the somewhat dry recountings of fictive facts might otherwise retain. Even on a second and third reading, there is an undercurrent of dread that encompasses the reader. There is a kind of fascination that draws us in and will not let us go. Indeed, this is one author whose death I continue to mourn because he had just what we all need to hear. That nothing is permanent except loss, and that we become human to the extent that we connect with this fleeting reality.Now, if only there were a children's author who does something similar, but perhaps this is an insight that only makes sense in one's middle age?Anyway, contemplating the bitter fruit of anti-semitism is only one level of Sebald's text. There are so many more. Read on.
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