On the Natural History of Destruction - Softcover

Sebald, W. G.

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9780676975307: On the Natural History of Destruction

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0676975305 ISBN 13: 9780676975307

Publisher: Knopf Canada, 2004

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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.

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From the Back Cover:

"Most writers, even good ones, write of what can be written; and move by their own angles into the discourse of their day. The very greatest write of what cannot be written; gravitating not toward the discourse but toward the silence. They break it, like the crust on untrodden snow. I think of [Anna] Akhmatova and Primo Levi, for example, and of W. G. Sebald, who died in 2001."
-Richard Eder, The New York Times Book Review

"Sebald is the real thing. . . . Sublime."
-The Globe and Mail

About the Author:

W.G. Sebald taught at the University of East Anglia in Norwich, England, for thirty years, becoming Professor of European Literature in 1987. His books won several international awards, including the National Book Critics Circle Award for Fiction and the Berlin Literature Prize. He died at age 57 in 2001.

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