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The Rings of Saturn

by W. G. Sebald, Michael Hulse
The Rings of Saturn

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  • Synopses & Reviews

ISBN13: 9780811214131
ISBN10: 0811214133
Condition: Less Than Standard


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From Powells.com

25 Books to Read Before You Die: World Edition

Travel the globe with these not-to-be-missed titles.


Staff Pick

One of the most inventive and strange novels of the past 25 years, The Rings of Saturn follows a nameless narrator on a walking tour of Suffolk in England. We meditate with the narrator, not only on the physical landscape, but also on his thoughts and memories, as we're led through this peripatetic book. Black and white photographs punctuate the novel, and help provide a reading experience like few others. Recommended By Adam P., Powells.com

Synopses & Reviews

Publisher Comments

A fictional account of a walking tour through England's East Anglia, Sebald's home for more than twenty years, The Rings of Saturn explores Britain's pastoral and imperial past. Its ten strange and beautiful chapters, with their curious archive of photographs, consider dreams and reality. As the narrator walks, a company of ghosts keeps him company — Thomas Browne, Swinburne, Chateaubriand, Joseph Conrad, Borges — conductors between the past and present. The narrator meets lonely eccentrics inhabiting tumble-down mansions, and hears of the furious coastal battles of two world wars. He tells of far-off China and the introduction of the silk industry to Norwich. He walks to the now forsaken harbor where Conrad first set foot on English soil and visits the site of the once-great city of Dunwich, now sunk in the sea, where schools of herring swim. As the narrator catalogs the transmigration of whole worlds, the reader is mesmerized by change and oblivion, survival and memories. Blending fiction and history, Sebald's art is as strange and beautiful as the rings of Saturn, created from fragments of shattered moons.

Review

"The book is so natural and accessible...that one is left enchanted." New York Times Book Review

Review

"Erudition of this sort is too rare in American fiction, but the hypnotic appeal here has as much to do with Sebald's deft portrait of the subtle, complex relations between individual experience and the rich human firmament that gives it meaning as it does with his remarkable mastery of history." Kirkus Reviews

Review

"Astonishingly subtle, marked by lovely, clear sentences of perceptual grace, Sebald's new novel is haunting and unlikely to be forgotten." Providence Sunday Journal

Review

"Not since Montaigne has an author bound such a breadth of passion, knowledge, experience and observation into such a singular vision." Salon.com

About the Author

W. G. Sebald was born in Germany in 1944 and died in 2001. He is the author of The Emigrants, The Rings of Saturn, Vertigo, Austerlitz, After Nature, On the Natural History of Destruction, Unrecounted and Campo Santo.

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Average customer rating 4.8 (4 comments)

`
EJI , August 04, 2012
One of the greatest novels of the 20th century. A beautiful blend of the postmodern and the pastoral.

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second gary , September 30, 2011 (view all comments by second gary)
In his book on Rossini in Paris in the 1820s, Benjamin Walton recalls that Stendhal suggested once that an ideal emblem for the art, music or literary critic could be found in an anecdote concerning an Italian tour guide, who would mutely indicate with an extended arm where his clients ought to be looking, all the while saying nothing. I think of this when I think of how one reader might suggest "The rings of Saturn" to another. My friend Emily leant me her copy sometime in June 2010: her bookmarks stayed with the book, two ticket stubs showing trips between Philadelphia, New York and Washington. One of my own bookmarks has stayed, too, a boarding pass for a flight from Toronto to Glasgow, from the last week of June 2010. I only read the book this spring; when I first tried it, it didn't catch, although I did recall the scene of generations of fishermen and their huts on the east coast of England. But it would be wrong to say more about the book, as its unexpected qualities... ah... I almost said too much. I did say too much. I am sorry. Let's just go back to that church interior somewhere in, oh, probably Venice, sometime around 1818, stand beside the guide, and point in the direction of "The rings of Saturn."

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graysea , January 26, 2011
so, the first time i tried reading this book, i had trouble getting into it. but in the late spring of 2010, i gave it another chance... and i'm so glad, because as i continued on, i felt more and more amazed at what the author--and translator!--had accomplished. i was truly stunned by the poetry and lyricism of the language, and the strong thematic lines that emerged through uses of carefully repeated words and turns of phrase. the translator obviously took a lot of care to bring out the deep ideas of this complex novel. there is a running theme about silk in the book, and one day i read a section in which sebald (gorgeously) describes the silkworms kept by the empress of china. a day or two after reading that, i stopped in at a little cafe in a little town on the central coast of california, and as i was sitting outside at a little table sipping my drink and reading RINGS OF SATURN, a woman walking by stopped and asked if i wanted to see some silkworms. turns out she had some in a box in her store. so i went and looked at them, and i listened to them munch their leaves, and i held one's strangely elastic, milky-white body in my hands and felt its sticky little feet, and thought, wow. this is pretty cool. i don't know whether that would have happened if i hadn't been reading THE RINGS OF SATURN, but i like to think it wouldn't have.

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LJ_Moore , February 09, 2010 (view all comments by LJ_Moore)
The rings of the planet Saturn are really one continuous ring made up of innumerable small particles. One well established astronomical theory suggests the rings are debris left over from a moon that was pulled apart when its orbit fell too close to Saturn. Light reflected from the varying substance of the rings is what makes Saturn appear to wax brighter and ebb dim. W.G. Sebald’s book, The Rings of Saturn, does not concern itself directly with the planets or astronomical topics, but with a very personal exploration into how a contemporary person can possibly shoulder an awareness of shared human history, and not be obliterated by it... Read more: http://tiny.cc/dUZir

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Product Details

ISBN:
9780811214131
Binding:
Trade Paperback
Publication date:
04/17/1999
Publisher:
W W NORTON & CO
Pages:
296
Height:
.83IN
Width:
5.50IN
Thickness:
1.00
Number of Units:
1
Illustration:
Yes
Copyright Year:
1999
Series Volume:
no. 473
UPC Code:
2800811214133
Author:
W. G. Sebald
Translator:
Michael Hulse
Media Run Time:
B
Subject:
Literature-A to Z
Subject:
Authors, German -- 20th century.
Subject:
Authors, german
Subject:
England Description and travel.
Subject:
England

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