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Lead book review

W.G. Sebald’s borrowed truths and barefaced lies

Why did W.G. Sebald risk his reputation by telling such strange, repeated lies, wonders Lucasta Miller

21 August 2021

9:00 AM

21 August 2021

9:00 AM

Speak, Silence: In Search of W.G. Sebald Carole Angier

Bloomsbury, pp.336, 30

W.G. Sebald is the modern master of the uncanny — or perhaps that should be ‘was’, as he died in a car crash near Norwich in 2001 at the age of 57. Deciding which tense to use depends on whether you mean ‘W.G. Sebald’ as a shorthand for his body of work, which outlives him, or to refer to the man who wrote it, known to his acquaintances as Max.

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