VERTIGO (First UK edition - first impression - clean ex-library copy of the scarcer hardcover issue)

W. G. Sebald (Translated from the German by Michael Hulse)

ISBN 10: 1860466230 / ISBN 13: 9781860466236

Published by The Harvill Press, London, 1999

About this Item

A clean ex-library copy of the first impression of the first UK edition, with full number-string sequence including the no. "1": 1 3 5 7 9 8 6 4 2 on the printer's page. This hardcover edition was published simultaneously with a more commonly found paperback edition. The hardcover copies were aimed mainly at public lending libraries, and so are much harder to find now. Translated from the German by Michael Hulse. Illustrated with black and white photographs throughout the text. ***Although ex-library, this is a very clean near fine copy in black cloth-covered boards with gilt titles to the spine. The gilt is still nice and bright, having been protected by the dustwrapper. The boards are clean and unmarked. Head and tail of the spine just very slightly creased. Corners sharp. Page block edges clean. The page block has sagged slightly at the spine due to the heavy-gauge paper used. Internally, the book is also near fine, with just the following library marks: 'Marlborough College Memorial Library' stamps crossed out in ink on the front pastedown and free endpaper, an ink code at the top of the front free endpaper, and a barcode on the rear pastedown - no other internal marks and hardly any signs of handling. The pages are clean and unmarked. No creasing or tears - the book feels largely unread. No foxing. Spine tight with no reading lean. ***In a near fine monochrome illustrated dustwrapper, which is not price-clipped, retaining the original publisher's price of £16.99 on the front flap. The dustwrapper is complete, with just very rubbing to the edges. No creases, chips or tears. No fading. The dustwrapper has been very well preserved by the original library jacket - now replaced with a thin (removable) protective sleeve. ***217mm x155mm. 263 pages. ***Contents: I. Beyle, or Love is a Madness Most Discreet, II. All'estero, III. Dr K. Takes the Waters at Riva, IV. Il ritorno in patria. ***'"Vertigo" is the book in which W. G. Sebald first employed the spell-binding blend of personal narrative, investigation, fiction, history and ravel writing that has since won him international acclaim for "The Emigrants" and "The Rings of Saturn". ***In the first of four linked narratives following the young Stendhal (at that time still Marie Henri Beyle) as he revisits the battlefields of Napoleon's Italian Campaign, Sebald announces his theme: the vertiginous unreliability of memory. In the second and third narratives, the frescoes of Pisanello, the imprisonment of Casanova in Venice, the trials of Franz Kafka in Italy, and the narrator's own uneasy journeyings, develop the theme. In the final movement, motifs sketched in the earlier parts of the book are synthesised into one mesmerising autobiographical quest as Sebald returns to his childhood roots in southern Germany to discover the dizzying otherness of his own past. ***Line by line we are drawn into a symphonic labyrinth from which escape seems impossible, until Sebald introduces his final theme: the delight the creative process takes in blending, transforming and refashioning past experience into a new and consoling whole.' (Quote taken from the front flap of the dustwrapper) ***A really clean ex-library copy of the first impression of the first UK edition of W. G. Sebald's "Vertigo", published in hardcover - far fewer copies were printed in this format compared with the simultaneous paperback edition. ***For all our books, postage is charged at cost, allowing for packaging: any shipping rates indicated on ABE are an average only: we will reduce the P & P charge where appropriate - please contact us for postal rates for heavier books and sets etc. Seller Inventory # 8935

Bibliographic Details

Title: VERTIGO (First UK edition - first impression...

Publisher: The Harvill Press, London

Publication Date: 1999

Binding: Hardcover

Condition: Near Fine

Dust Jacket Condition: Near Fine

Edition: First UK Edition

About this title

Synopsis:

At moments when reality shows itself to be unstable or uncanny, we experience a form of vertigo. Four stories interweave with each other to illustrate the moment that fact clashes with memory.

Review:

It is not often that books receive the universal critical acclaim with which W.G. Sebald's work in English translation has been met. The Rings of Saturn, in particular, achieved the sort of plaudits which would enable most writers to die happy. Sebald's limpid prose is literally entrancing and has encouraged a serious, passionate and aesthetic response. His unique style was first employed in Vertigo, published in the original German in 1990 and now available in English. As in The Emigrants, Vertigo interweaves four narratives that develop an elegiac evocation of a transcendent theme--which, in this case, is that of memory. Beginning with Marie Henri Beyle (Stendhal), and his painful and unreliable recollections of the military campaign during which his rites of passage were won, the narrative elegantly traverses Sebald's own voyages through Italy. It journeys into the intersection of temporal and personal perspectives which is the stuff of all interpretations, both past and present.

As the book develops, it returns to the same locations: Milan, Verona, Venice and the Alps. In the course of this fractured meandering, the reader lives with a haunted Franz Kafka and admires the serene beauty of the stars above Lake Garda, before returning to Sebald's home in the Bavarian Alps ,where the author confronts his childhood memories.

Of all Sebald's works, his narrative style is perhaps best suited to the subject-matter of this book, for it is precisely the distorted and unfathomable essence of memory that his stumbling journey seeks to unravel. Thus in Vertigo, Sebald's integration of personal, historical and fictional perspectives, combined with the nature of his physical exploration, creates a vivid and lasting impression of the imaginative confusion that is inherent in any thought, recollection or projection. This style of writing requires deep integrity and it is impossible not to develop a picture of a deeply sensitive mind, which is aware of the very nature of its conceits and deceptions. "What is it that undoes a writer?", asks Sebald, when thinking of Stendhal. The question weighs over the rest of the book and indeed over much of Sebald's work.

In The Rings of Saturn he goes some way towards producing an answer, not just to this but indeed to the motivation of Vertigo as a whole:

"The fact is that writing is the only way in which I am able to cope with the memories which overwhelm me so frequently and unexpectedly. If they remained locked away, they would become heavier and heavier as time went on, so that in the end I would succumb under their mounting weight."

--Toby Green