W. G. Sebald, in lectures given in Zurich in 1997, asks why German writers failed to describe the Allied bombing of German cities from 1942 to 1945, in which hundreds of thousands of civilians died. He discusses the firestorm in Hamburg and the postwar silence, and examines authors such as Alfred Andersch, Hans Erich Nossack, and Peter Weiss. A related essay covers the writer Jean Amery.
Readers of Sebald and of postwar German history will find a brief, serious meditation on memory and national guilt. It raises hard questions about what societies choose to remember.
Deep and contemplative; a moderate read.
Best for readers like The Deep Diver. Which reader are you?
- Published
- 1999
- Language
- EN
