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.