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  • Published: 21 April 2026
  • ISBN: 9780141037028
  • Imprint: Penguin General UK
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 544
  • RRP: $26.99

Silent Catastrophes

Essays in Austrian Literature




From acclaimed critic, novelist and academic W. G. Sebald, author of Austerlitz and The Rings of Saturn, a collection of essay on the Austrian writers who meant so much to him

Appearing for the first time in English, Silent Catastrophes brings together W. G. Sebald’s essays on the Austrian writers who meant so much to him.

The evolution of Austria from vast empire to diminutive Alpine republic, followed by its annexation by Nazi Germany, had a profound traumatic impact on the literary output of the nation. Essays on the writings of Kafka, Handke, Bernhard and more, explore the concepts of ‘home/land’, ‘borderland’ and ‘exile’ with deep compassion and insight.

A revelation to Sebald’s English-language readers, Silent Catastrophes traces many of the themes which animate Sebald’s own work and illuminates how melancholy – the contemplation of disaster in progress – is itself a form of resistance.

  • Published: 21 April 2026
  • ISBN: 9780141037028
  • Imprint: Penguin General UK
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 544
  • RRP: $26.99

About the author

W. G. Sebald

W G Sebald (Author) W. G. Sebald was born in Wertach im Allgäu, in the Bavarian Alps, in 1944. He studied German language and literature in Freiburg, Switzerland and Manchester. In 1966 he took up a position as an assistant lecturer at the University of Manchester, settling permanently in England in 1970. He was professor of Modern German Literature at the University of East Anglia, and is the author of The Emigrants which won the Berlin Literature Prize, the Literatur Nord Prize and the Johannes Bobrowski Medal, The Rings of Saturn and Austerlitz. W. G. Sebald died in 2001. Michael Hulse and Simon Rae (Translators) Michael Hulse teaches poetry at Warwick University and regularly does reading tours in the UK, the US, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and India. He is based in Warwick. Simon Rae is a playwright , novelist and broadcaster (he presented Radio 4's 'Poetry Please' for several years). He lives in Banbury, Oxfordshire. Both Michael Hulse and Simon Rae are published poets and winners of the National Poetry Competition.

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