ABSTRACT
One of the attractions of a freelance translator's life is the sheer variety it offers. When the Preacher in Ecclesiastes said that time and chance happeneth to us all, he meant it in his usual mood of profound pessimism, but some chances are pleasant, and for me it was a happy if also rather alarming one to be asked to translate W. G. Sebald's Austerlitz. I have often been asked just how it came about, and I think I should explain. At first I had no idea that Max Sebald's forthcoming new 'novel' would be involved, or as some would say his new narrative, since from Schwindel. Gefühle. (Vertigo) to Austerlitz they had tended to be some way from conventional fiction. Austerlitz itself, while never officially labelled a novel by Max Sebald, in fact appears to me more of a novel, as the term is usually understood, than its predecessors. It may even be regarded as a novel within a novel: first there are the framework chapters in which the unnamed but typically Sebaldian narrator, Max Sebald's own alter ego, describes his acquaintanceship with the eponymous Jacques Austerlitz, then there is the inner core of the book, Austerlitz's own account of his life, with the two narratives alternating and interlocking.
