Carole Angier
The Language of Destruction
The End: Hamburg 1943
By Hans Erich Nossack (Translation and Foreword by Joel Agee)
University of Chicago Press 112pp £14
In 1997 W G Sebald gave a series of lectures in which he deplored the inadequate response of German literature to German sufferings in the Second World War. He concentrated on the bombing of cities by the RAF, in which over half a million Germans died, and seven and a half million were left homeless. This was not the only untold story, but it was the most apocalyptic: an inferno of firestorms that left hundreds of thousands of shrivelled, charcoaled corpses, and whole cities turned into moonscapes overnight. To imagine this we must multiply 9/11 from one morning to five years, from two towers to 131 towns and cities, and from 3,000 to 600,000 dead.
The lectures were published in German in 1999, and in English in 2003, as The Natural History of Destruction. From the start they gave rise to controversy, especially in Germany, but also here. Sebald was pointing out a taboo, and then breaking it; and he was reminding us that we
Sign Up to our newsletter
Receive free articles, highlights from the archive, news, details of prizes, and much more.@Lit_Review
Follow Literary Review on Twitter
Twitter Feed
London's East End was long synonymous with poverty and sweatshops, while its West End was associated with glamour and high society. But when it came to the fashion industry, were the differences really so profound?
Sharman Kadish - Winkle-pickers & Bum Freezers
Sharman Kadish: Winkle-pickers & Bum Freezers - Fashion City: How Jewish Londoners Shaped Global Style; Fashion City: ...
literaryreview.co.uk
In 1982, Donald Rumsfeld presented Saddam Hussein with a pair of golden spurs. Two decades later he was dropping bunker-busting bombs on his palaces.
Where did the US-Iraqi relationship go wrong?
Rory Mccarthy - The Case of the Vanishing Missiles
Rory Mccarthy: The Case of the Vanishing Missiles - The Achilles Trap: Saddam Hussein, the United States and the ...
literaryreview.co.uk
Barbara Comyns was a dog breeder, a house painter, a piano restorer, a landlady... And a novelist.
@nclarke14 on the lengths 20th-century women writers had to go to make ends meet:
Norma Clarke - Her Family & Other Animals
Norma Clarke: Her Family & Other Animals - Barbara Comyns: A Savage Innocence by Avril Horner
literaryreview.co.uk