W.G. Sebald's "The Rings of Saturn" - A Literary Exploration of History and Nature

prof: I picked up a reference to this book from John Le Carre’s posthumous novel and found it to be rich in entwining memory, reality, fact and fiction as well as the ‘geography’ of East Anglia.

United Kingdom on Mar 07, 2022

Peggy Jones: One reads this book as if walking down a country lane and being astonished from time to time by the superb beauty encountered. The prose is luminous and astonishing.

Australia on Feb 07, 2021

B. D. Mahoney: W.SEBALD author of this book has written a tale of travels through ancient times. Even including catastrophic weather events of decades ago. I want to visit where he has gone. love his journey with silk manufacture and the Empires which tried and failed to manufacture. a welcome read and at times will take reader into exotic worlds.

Australia on May 15, 2019

CP: Stellar book, and this edition is pretty.

Germany on Nov 28, 2018

Amazon Customer: Good book, fast delivery.

Canada on Apr 05, 2018

Ethan Cooper: A word of advice: Before beginning THE RINGS OF SATURN, locate the “Contents” pages, which this reader, who turned immediately to Chapter I, overlooked. These pages are, IMO, indispensable, since they clarify the elegant, brilliant, but somewhat random trains of thought that W.G. Sebald follows in each chapter of this mesmerizing yet puzzling book.

To illustrate its value, the “Contents” pages indicate that the train of thought for Chapter II is: “The diesel train—Morton Peto’s palace—Visiting Somerleyton—The cities of Germany in flames—The decline of Lowestoft—The former coastal resort—Frederick Farrar and the court of King James II.” Note that in following this flow of subjects, Sebald develops a seamless narrative that:

o Starts in August 1992, when the narrator is traveling in an old diesel train that runs from Norwich to Lowestoft;

o Backs to the 1850s, when Morton Peto, an entrepreneur who built a fortune in Victorian England, builds Somerleyton, a massive country house, which is near Lowestoft and that Sebald compares to a palace in a fairy tale;

o Returns to 1992, when the narrator visits the decrepit and rundown...

United States on Aug 14, 2017

John P. Jones III: W.G. Sebald was a unique, astonishing erudite writer, and a master of segue, who was taken from us far too early (he died in a car accident, in 2001, at the age of 57). He left his native Germany after he had become an adult, and settled in East Anglia, in England. This book assumes the format of a ramble around the decaying villages and fields of Suffolk, interspersed with diverse discourses on a broad-range of historical events that span the globe, all accomplished in a matter-of-fact, yet sublime prose style. I was reminded of the "butterfly effect" from chaos theory; how the proverbial flap of a butterfly's wings in China could contribute to a tornado in Kansas. Likewise, Sebald makes these tenuous connections, often to Suffolk, to commence a digression thousands of miles removed. For example, another writer who immigrated to England was Joseph Conrad, who spent three months sailing on ships out of the Suffolk port of Lowestoft, in 1878, and from this slender thread Sebald launches into the brutal Belgian subjugation of the Congo, which was the setting of Conrad's most famous book,  Heart of Darkness  and the author goes on to chronicle the conscious of Roger...

United States on Apr 14, 2010