A German Genius in Britain

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Iain Sinclair goes in search of acclaimed writer WG Sebald.

4 Extra Debut. Writer and psychogeographer Iain Sinclair scours England for traces of the acclaimed writer WG Sebald, who died in 2001.

Born in Bavaria in 1944, WG Sebald moved to England in 1966, working first at the University of Manchester, and then the newly established University of East Anglia. 

Sebald began publishing relatively late in life, and was still developing his unique literary style at the time of his death in a road accident in 2001. His work combines fiction, memoir, history and travelogue, the prose is studded with black and white photographs, presented caption-free, to often haunting effect. 

Sebald's work is concerned with memory, and frequently touches on the dreadful silence of the German people concerning the Holocaust.

Presenter Iain Sinclair visits Manchester to meet writer Nicholas Royle to look for remnants of the post-industrial landscape which features in 'The Emigrants', Sebald’s first book translated to English in 1996. 

In Norfolk, Sinclair meets Jo Catling, a colleague of Sebald's at UEA. Then in London, with Sebald's friend, the poet Stephen Watts, Sinclair walks the East London streets and cemeteries featured in his last book, 'Austerlitz'. 

Featuring an extract from Sebald's last interview, the St Jerome event at London’s Southbank Centre.

Producer: Jessica Treen

First broadcast on BBC Radio 4 in May 2014.

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