About this title: This novel, which has secured W. G. Sebald a reputation as one of the most original literary figures of his time, combines historical fact with fiction as the narrator, who has recently suffered a mysterious and paralyzing breakdown, travels backward in time while he wanders through Suffolk, England. It includes photographs of people and places mentioned in the text. A New York Times Notable Book for 1998.
Note: This is a general synopsis. Each listing is described below.
Binding: Trade paperback
Publisher: New Directions Publishing Corporation
Date Published: 1999
ISBN-13:9780811214131ISBN:0811214133
Description: Very good. No dust jacket as issued. tight good clean readable copy some pages folded and light underlinig. Trade paperback (US). Glued binding. 296 p. Contains: Illustrations. Audience: General/trade. read more
Binding: Paperback
Publisher: New Directions, NY
Date Published: 1998
ISBN-13:9780811214131ISBN:0811214133
Description: Near Fine. 0811214133. Translated from the German by Michael Hulse. Second printing thus (paperback). Remainder mark on bottom edge, else fine in pictorial wraps. read more
Binding: Softcover
Publisher: New Directions
Date Published: 1999-05-01
ISBN-13:9780811214131ISBN:0811214133
Description: NEW. Softcover. From an inventory that is 100% brand-new, 100% direct from the publishers' distribution channel. We carry NO pre-owned, NO remaindered. We pack in CARDBOARD to ensure the pristine quality is maintained. (Bubble-wrap alone is NOT sufficient to protect from USPS equipment. ) Guaranteed brand-NEW, protected with CARDBOARD, your satisfaction is guaranteed. BKLUVID: 9780811214131. read more
Binding: Paperback
Publisher: New Directions Publishing Corpor
Date Published: 1999
ISBN-13:9780811214131ISBN:0811214133
Description: New. Brand New! Buy with confidence-your satisfaction is guaranteed at B-Logistics! Due to the large scale of our operation, we do not have access to the specific contents/condition of our items. Please note that Expedited shipping is not available at this time. read more
Edition: NEW ED
Binding: Paperback
Publisher: VINTAGE Country = UNITED KINGDOM
Date Published: 2002
ISBN-13:9780099448921ISBN:0099448920
Description: BRAND NEW PAPERBACK. 304 pages. (304 pages) a work of imaginative literature, this fictional record of a journey on foot through coastal east anglia, sebald's home for the last 20 years, is also an exploration of england's pastoral and imperial past, evoking people and cultures of the region, past and present illustrations, facsims. edition new ed (Paperback) read more
Edition: Illustrated.
Binding: Hardcover
Publisher: New Directions Publishing Corporation
Date Published: 1998
ISBN-13:9780811213783ISBN:0811213781
Description: Fine in fine dust jacket. 1st thus. Glued binding. Paper over boards. With dust jacket. 296 p. Contains: Illustrations. Audience: General/trade. read more
Edition: First Edition
Binding: Hardcover
Publisher: New Directions Publishing Corporation
ISBN-13:9780811213783ISBN:0811213781
Description: Very Good. DJ. 0811213781 First Edition, First Printing. NEAR FINE+ hardcover book in FINE dust-jacket. NOT marked. NOT price-clipped. NOT remaindered. NOT faded. NOT a b/c. NOT an XL. Lighter spot on dark gray front end paper where former owner gift inscription was erased. All of our dust-jackets are shipped in fresh, archival-safe mylar protective book jacket covers. read more
Edition: First Edition
Binding: Hardcover
Publisher: New Directions, New York, New York, U.S.A.
Date Published: 1998
ISBN-13:9780811213783ISBN:0811213781
Description: Near Fine in Near Fine jacket. 8vo-over 7¾"-9¾" tall. This is Sebald's second novel to be published in English, the first being the critically acclaimed The Emigrants. The Rings of Saturn is unlike any other novel I have ever read. The chapters are like brilliant and profound essays, and yet the book has a compelling narrative drive. The protagonist is named W. G. Sebald, and while he is on a walking tour of Suffolk, England, he shares his thoughts, remenbrances and knowledge. Sights seen and ... read more
Description: Very good; Collectible. 1998 New Directions hard cover-first edition-some staining to page edge-otherwise dust jacket (now in mylar cover) and cover fine binding strong contents clean-enjoy. read more
Binding: Hardcover
Publisher: New Directions,, New York:
Date Published: (1998).
Description: First U. S. edition. Includes publisher's blurb about the book. A fictional walk through East Anglia, England, accompanied by ghosts. Fine in dust jacket. read more
Edition: First edition. Illustrated.
Binding: Hardcover
Publisher: New Directions Publishing Corporation
Date Published: 1998
ISBN-13:9780811213783ISBN:0811213781
Description: Fine in fine mylar protected dust jacket. Tiny dent on top of dj spine, minimal soil on edge, else as new. Glued binding. Paper over boards. With dust jacket. 296 p. Contains: Illustrations. Audience: General/trade. read more
Edition: First American Edition
Binding: Hardcover
Publisher: New York, NY: New Directions Publ. Corp, 1998, New York, NY
Date Published: 1998
ISBN-13:9780811213783ISBN:0811213781
Description: Photos. Near Fine in Near Fine jacket. Sm8vo 7-1/2" to 8" Tall. 296 pp, quarterbound w/grey papercovered boards w/maroon cloth covered spine, dj light maroon-grey-blu w/wht-blu lettering w/illustrated front & spine. The book explores Britain's pastoral & imperial past. A walking tour through England's East Anglia, with the author blending fiction & history. As teh narrator walks, a company of ghosts keeps him company-Thomas Browne, Swinburne, Chateaubriand, Joseph Conrad, Borges-conductors ... read more
Binding: Hardcover
Publisher: New Directions, (New York):
Date Published: (1998).
Description: First U.S. edition of his second book. Very faint dampstain to top edge of spine, otherwise fine in dustwrapper with small stain on verso of spine where cloth bled from dampness (does not show through to front). Translated by Michale Hulse. Publisher's letter laid in. read more
"Before my recollection of this novel eludes me, I want to write what I remember thinking as I read.
The first four chapters had me thinking I was going to replace my one entry under books on my facebook page and replace it with this one. There are chapters where the narrator considers the miraculous past: he thinks about maritime warfare where the equivalent population of (at that time) the world's biggest cities were lost at sea; he thinks about the massive amounts of herring fished in the North Sea and then brought to feed; he thinks about an old mansion where a frail-looking mogul whose name I forget but whose portrait I don't (there are lots of pictures and that makes some of the later chapters easier to read); the planned railroad in England to be built for Chinese emperors. There is nothing about the actual rings of Saturn beyond the epigraph, but I still consider a suitable title considering the extraordinary miracles rendered in this prose fiction.
I know Sebald's novels have stirred some controversy as to their genre. If he were writing today, he'd most likely benefit from loosened interpretations of non-fiction. However, what is more interesting about Rings of Saturn, however, is the narrator. At one point, this narrator is in awe of the English warplanes that would level German cities and he endeavors to learn German. Even though, the work is translated from the German by Michael Hulse. He later explores a church where it is rumoured the narrator's forefather, a Saint Sebolt, worked. Then there is the professorial author he visits named Michael Hamburger whose life recalls many of the same factors as Sebald's. Who is our narrator?
What's the deal anyways with authors of German lineage and their two-consonant names who are smoking in their author photo?"
"Sebald, literature's greatest rambler, a rambler extraordinaire, connoisseur of the uninteresting and investigator of the more tedious aspects of history.
Rings of Saturn is a garrulous tour guide about places to which no one wants to go. I stopped reading this at around p.50, in the middle of a seemingly endless rumination on how people used to fish for herrings off the coast of some backwater English town. As I read, I thought to myself with dread, 'Sblood, what's he going to be going on about on p.175? and realized I could not go on.
The experience of reading the book is like being trapped in an elevator with an interesting and articulate older gentleman, who is very keen on sharing with you every shred of thought that happens to come to him, concerning whatever. It's paradoxical: Though the man himself seems rather interesting, what he's interested in is deeply uninteresting (this reminds me of something Pushkin once wrote, that one of the main things a novelist must be is interesting). I was adolescently bored by most of the things Sebald was writing about.
So you get the point, Sebald is not for me. But don't be bummed; he may be for you. Two separate Goodreads members whose opinions I value, one of whom shares a bloodline with me, recommended this book. Some folks, as I had to remind myself while reading, are enthralled with Sebald. He can write beautifully (or the translation leads me to believe he can write beautifully).
Rings of Saturn made me realize I'm less Nabokovian than I might have thought: Beautiful writing is not enough; the content matters."
"Over the course of several day's walk through the English countryside, the writer/speaker reminisces and meditates on the local history and architecture, digressing into an exloration of imperialism, colonialism, the nature of time and loss in memory. It's hard to describe, but it's astonishingly beautiful. It made me feel the same way I felt when I first saw the Russian ark movie--swept away by a tide of memory, like the gentle inexorable, lulling ebb of the sea in a quiet lagoon protected from the sea on a remote, lost island."
"This book is really unlike anything else I have read. It's a novel which may be as accurate as any non-fiction account. Sebald recounts a walking tour he takes in England. His meandering is mirrored by ruminations on other stories--both true and imagined. Visiting the port where Conrad left for Africa sends Sebald on a long remembrance of that visit and its effect on Conrad and his work. The narrative is full of interesting tidbits (such as that Conrad's successor in Africa was an uncle of Kafka's) that lead Sebald onto other stories. Most often, though, he returns to Thomas Browne and his melancholy descriptions of burial urns and other artifacts from early civilizations on the British isles.
If The Rings of Saturn can be said to be about anything, it is about memory and how it makes all things its own. In a curious, almost magical, way Sebald makes all the other stories that he tells a part of his own. When he visits a man attempting to make an exact replica of the ancient Temple in Jerusalem (based on the latest archaeological and Biblical scholarship), the man's story becomes Sebald's story. This is true not just in a metaphorical sense (building the temple paralleling building a novel), but in a real sense where just as the man's model is both all-consuming and always incomplete, so is Sebald's construction of his memories. Sebald's use of photographs in the book is in a sense a way of concretizing his memories, just as the modeler makes scholarship into reality.
The novel is also often beautifully written (Michael Hulse gets some credit for conveying that beauty in his translation). I find this book to be much better than Vertigo, which I also liked very much. It is definitely worth reading."
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