all those black-and-white photos
in Austerlitz
World Kigo Database (W. G. Sebald)
Note: Austerlitz, the last novel by W. G. Sebald, is often regarded as “one of the most significant German language works of fiction for the period since the Second World War.” It’s known for its “curious and wide-ranging mixture of fact (or apparent fact), recollection and fiction, often punctuated by indistinct black-and-white photographs set in evocative counterpoint to the narrative rather than illustrating it directly.”
These black-and-white photos inserted in the text read like those on newspaper pages, and artistically speaking, they are an integral part of the novel, mainly used to produce unsettling effects, especially when viewed in the context and themes of the surrounding passages.
