Another tour de force by Sebald utilizing his usual combination of photographs, leaps in time and space, connections and allusions to real and imagined events, moods of darkness and storm, and complex narrative constructions to create a novel that is both challenging and fascinating. Tried to read this first in small bites, but couldn’t keep track of the narrative line, so stayed in bed one rainy, cold December Saturday and read it from cover to cover in 4 hours. The narrator, ostensibly Sebald, travels from England to Vienna, Venice, Padua, Verona, Desenzano, Riva and finally his hometown of W, in southwest Germany. Along the way, we have stories of Marie Henri Beyle (b.1783-d.1842) a soldier in Napoleon’s army and eventually a famous novelist. Unsure what Beyle’s story is supposed to do for the novel, but several threads of his story appear later, e.g. the Battle of Marengo which Beyle experienced and the uniform of the Austrian chasseur which fell apart in the attic of Sebald’s childhood village home; King Ludwig I of Bavaria who Beyle ‘saw’ in Venice and the Organization Ludwig which turned out to be two young men committing serial murders; Beyle’s love for Methilde Demboroski Visontini and the story of Mathild, one of the three aunts of the neighboring family in Sebald’s childhood home; the author Grillparazer whose Italian travel book Beyle reads and who mentions a hotel which Kafka stays at in 1913. And that brings us to 1913 a year which turns up repeatedly throughout the book—the whole chapter on Kafka’s visit to Riva takes place then; the book being read by Salvatore Altamura the newspaper editor who reveals the Organization Ludwig story is 1912+1, Sebald is reading a 1913 edition of Samuel Pepys diary on the final train ride;the inscription over the door of the forester in Sebald’s hometown of W, and there are likely other references. Several images recur as well—the barque or boat with the bier accompanied by two men in dark blue jackets and silver buttons echo the Organization Ludwig as well as the two men who Sebald feels are tailing him in Venice, Verona, and Desenzano. The novel is full of coincidence (the twins on the bus who look like Kafka), time and space warps and ultimately, the fallibility of memory: “The more images I gathered from the past, the more unlikely it seemed that the past had actually happened in this or that way, for nothing about it could be called normal, most of it was absurd, and if not absurd, appalling.”