Will I love The Rings of Saturn?

What makes a great novel? One that will be read forever? Top critics and commentators such as Harold Bloom and Nicholas Royle say the greatest fiction is written in a foreign language that somehow or other we understand. It is strange, unusual, uncanny, yet tells us profound truths about the human condition. The Rings of Saturn did even more for me; I thought it was miraculous. On the face of it, the narrator simply hikes through East Anglia. But he blends reportage, history, philosophy, mental ruminations, and much else in a melancholic commentary on life. Even translated from German, Sebald’s… show more.

Every “best of” list should have at least one book in translation, so I give you The Rings of Saturn by the German writer W. G. Sebald. This amazing genre-bending book is set in England and is called a novel, but it reads more like a history book, a geography textbook, and a travelogue combined in one walker’s head. It is a moving contemplation on the deep past and inner workings of the planet and the effects of humans on the natural landscape. Go, take the long walk with this brilliant mind and return with an altered and educated perspective,… show more.