This book is
for those who prefer moving ruminations on the theme of memory, history, and
time, and who like to be challenged by unconventional but fascinating writing.
The story,
unspooled by a nebulous narrator, is that of Jacques Austerlitz, an
architectural historian who records origins of massive colonial structures such
as railway stations, spas, museums, forts, and libraries all over post-war
Europe. The narrator first meets him in Antwerp railway station in 1967 in what
turns out to be a life-long acquaintanceship with a strange and melancholic
Austerlitz. They continue to meet infrequently during the next few decades and
each meeting slowly unpeels the mystery surrounding the identity and origin of
Austerlitz.
We slowly
learn that Jacques Austerlitz was the only child of a Czech Jewish couple
living in Prague just prior to the invasion of Czechoslovakia by Nazis in 1939.
Fearing for his life under German occupation, his mother sends Austerlitz, not
yet five, to Wales to live as Dafydd Elias with a cheerless couple. He remains
unaware about his identity, origin, and name until his fifteenth year. Despite
learning about his new name, he chooses to shut out this knowledge, refuses to
inquire into his origins, and grows into a lonely and a desolate adult. As a
reader we can sense that there is a menace lurking around the corner and that
maybe there is a secret that Austerlitz is carrying unbeknownst even to him.
One day, while
exploring Liverpool station in London that secret bursts open. He has an
epiphany that as a four-year old, he was part of Kindertransport - the informal
name of rescue efforts that brought thousands of refugee Jewish children to
Great Britain from Nazi Germany. While he was sent to England, his mother was
arrested in Czechoslovakia, deported to a concentration camp in Theresienstadt,
and then, presumably, to Auschwitz. His father flees to Paris where he
disappeared. As Austerlitz recovers flashes of his childhood memory, he becomes
an obsessive investigator of his past. He goes to Prague, traces out his
childhood governess, and locates the ghetto where his mother was interned. He
visits this ghetto and walks through the corridors and rooms where more than
60,000 Jews were held captive before being transported for incineration. His
father, we learn, was captured and incarcerated in late 1942 in the French
concentration camp at Gurs. Although, we are not explicitly told about the
final fate of his parents, we can only infer the worst.
There are many
unique things about the book. The most striking aspect of the book is the use
of black and white photographs, images, architectural plans, paintings, and
ticket stubs to complement the text. It appears that Sebald has included these
un-captioned images as documentary evidence to lend sanctity and authenticity
to his story. There are also photographs of some real people: a little boy seen
on the book cover who we think is Austerlitz, a rugby team of which Austerlitz
is a member, and a grainy picture of a beautiful woman purported to be
Austerlitz’s mother. But, here is a delicious dichotomy. While the images of
the buildings and forts are accurate and help to build a sense of narrative
accuracy, we know that Jacques Austerlitz is a fictional character. Therefore,
if he is a fictional character, these pictures cannot be of him. Thus, by
deliberately projecting the false history of his fictional characters onto the
photographs of real people, Sebald artfully muddles the line between fiction
and historical fact. In doing so, he confronts the enormity of Holocaust and
its attendant horror most elliptically.
The other
aspect of the book is the distance that Sebald creates between the reader and
the action that is taking place. He achieves this not only through second hand
narration but also third-hand, and often fourth-hand story telling. So, we have
the anonymous narrator tell us what Austerlitz reveals to be a detail that
another character actually conveys. Sebald controls this layering quite
brilliantly thereby giving an impression of a complex labyrinth unraveling at a
pre-defined pace. Sebald uses this indirect way of story-telling to confront
the troubled history of Germany during the Second World War.
Sebald’s virtuosity
as a writer is visible in the scholarly digressions in the book that inter alia
include the history of moths, the capability of homing pigeons, the integrity
of fortifications in ancient forts, the photographic process, and the
rejuvenating abilities of spas. These digressions are interleaved with the main
narrative unobtrusively and provide a beautiful counterpoint to the impending
sense of doom. Sebald’s writing is hypnotic where long sentences connect
everything – history, chance, fate, death, and memory.
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