W. G. Sebald : history memory trauma The novelist poet and essayist W. G. Sebald (1944 2001) was perhaps the most original German writer of the last decade of the 20th century ( Die Ausgewanderten Austerlitz Luftkrieg und Literatur ). His writing is marked by a unique hybridity that combines characteristics of travelogue cultural criticism crime story historical essay and dream diary among other genres. He employs layers of literary and motion picture allusion that contribute to a sometimes enigmatic sometimes intimately familiar mood; his dominant mode is melancholy. The contributions of this anthology examine W. G. Sebald as narrator and pensive observer of history. The book includes a previously unpublished interview with Sebald from 1998