The 100 best books of the 21st century
No 5
Austerlitz by WG Sebald
Long and winding river
Andy Beckett on W G Sebald's Austerlitz, a meandering journey through time, place and genre
Austerlitz
W G Sebald
415pp, Hamish Hamilton, £16.99
Saturday 29 September 2001
In W G Sebald's The Rings of Saturn, which helped him acquire a large British reputation, one of the more memorable scenes - intentionally or otherwise - involved a fogeyish narrator, staying at an empty seaside hotel in Suffolk, attempting to eat fish and chips. The fish, Sebald begins,"had doubtless lain entombed in the deep-freeze for years... The breadcrumb armour-plating had been partly singed by the grill, and the prongs of my fork bent on it... The tartare sauce was turned grey by the sooty breadcrumbs." When the narrator finally manages to bite into his fillet, he finds "nothing but an empty shell".