Vertigo
By: W.G. Sebald ; translated by Michael Hulse.
Contributors: Hulse, Michael, 1955-
Publisher: New Directions Pub.
Published: 2000
Place of publication: New York
Language: eng
Number of pages: 263
Description: "An unnamed narrator, beset by nervous ailments, is our guide on a hair-raising journey across Europe and into the past. Vertigo is a book in four parts. The opening section is devoted to Stendhal's memories of joining Napoleon's army as a very young man just when it invaded Italy. The second section centers on Casanova's horrible imprisonment in Venice.

The third part follows Kafka's tribulations in Italy; and the fourth part chronicles, in an intensely moving fashion, Sebald's own return to his childhood home in a small Bavarian village. Everywhere he encounters self-alienation and the unreliability of memory: "what it is that undoes a writer.""--BOOK JACKET.