W. G. Sebald: Emigrant and Academic

In this chapter, Schütte introduces Sebald as a writer caught not only between two cultures, but between the worlds of academia and literature. It explores the beginnings of Sebald’s life, from his remote childhood in an Alpine village tohis ‘poisonous’ family inheritance – Sebald considered his parents complicit in the crimes of National Socialism. Schütte goes on to consider Sebald’s emigration to the UK, charting his development as an intellectual and his taking up of writing due to a dissatisfaction with the majority of German post-war literature.