Payback

Written by:Stephen Mitchelmore.

I read the WG Sebald volume in a day and a morning. Unputdownable it was. As I might want to write something longer, I won’t go into minor review mode here. But I will mention that Sebald mentions the work of Gert Ledig, whose novel Payback (”A horrifying account of the effects of an Allied air raid on a German city during WWII”) is, I’ve just discovered, being published next month by Granta, translated by Michael Hofmann.

Another of Sebald’s subjects, Jean Am�ry, is also the subject of a new book: On “The Human Race”: Essays and Commentary with contributions from Georges Perec, Sarah Kofman, Maurice Blanchot, Amery’s wife Marguerite Duras, and even ex-President of France Francois Mitterand, the man who rescued Am�ry from Dachau. The Human Race is a famous but neglected book published under the pseudonym Robert Antelme. I hope to get copies of each soon. Sebald much prefers Am�ry’s approach to the more expressionistic German authors he writes about. I’ll be agreeing with him at more length sometime, perhaps. Betcha can’t wait?

Posted on April 14th, 2003.

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