Introduction

In 1988 W. G. Sebald published his long poem Nach der Natur (After Nature) in an initial print run of 2000 copies. This publication marks the moment when Sebald the university lecturer, academic researcher, and critic, known to his friends and colleagues as Max, emerged publicly as the writer W. G. Sebald, now acclaimed as one of the most original and significant literary voices of our time. In little more than a decade Sebald followed Nach der Natur with the four works of prose that have established his reputation: Schwindel. Gefühle. (Vertigo), Die Ausgewanderten (The Emigrants), Die Ringe des Saturn (The Rings if Saturn) and Austerlitz. This period also saw the publication of his Zurich lectures on the aerial bombardment of Germany during World War II as Luftkrieg und Literatur (On the Natural History of Destruction), as well as the appearance of two collections of essays on Austrian and 'Alemannic' writers and artists, Unheimliche Heimat (Strange Homeland) and Logis in einem Landhaus (A Place in the Country), additions to a body of critical work that stretches back to the late 1960s. It concluded with work on two interlinked collections of poems, one English, one German, in collaboration with visual artists: For Years Now with Tess Jaray and, with Jan Peter Tripp, Unerzählt (Unrecounted). Since his much-lamented untimely death in 2001, two further collections have appeared: the prose pieces on Corsica and critical essays assembled in Campo Santo, and the selection of published and early poems Über das Land und das Wasser (Across the Land and the Water), an English edition of which is in preparation at the time of writing. Hitherto unpublished or rediscovered critical essays, pieces of journalism and interviews are still being published as they gradually come to light, and the process of translation and dissemination into ever-widening circles is an ongoing one. We are fortunate that Sebald's oeuvre still holds some surprises for us.