I just finished reading WG #Sebald Vertigo. Sebald was a professor of German literature at the University of East Anglia. He's more famous for writing about the aftermath of the Holocaust (e.g. Emigrants) but Vertigo is his first book and introduced his strange style to the world. Fittingly given the title, I found it a disconcerting read. Ostensibly a travelogue, complete with blurred pictures, some purportedly from a personal camera, it follows the author's trip from the UK to his childhood village (which, bizarrely, is referred to as "W." like in some kind of 19thC novel) in alpine Bavaria, via Venice, Riva and some nauseating bus journeys. But weirdly there are references to fictional characters (the Hunter Gracchus, who was a character in a bizarre Kafka short story- neither dead nor alive) and real, dead characters (the writer Stendahl and his lovers- presumably a fictionalised account). Some of the prose is mesmerizing - and almost effortlessly so as it describes the beautiful countryside, or the nervousness the traveler feels when he thinks he is being followed, which I found quite relatable. What makes the book disconcerting is that you don't know what is real, what is "really imagined" (ie when Sebald thinks he is being followed) and what is purely fictional. A good example is the description of the death of a real hunter in W., which happened during Sebald's childhood (perhaps? we don't know)- which parallels Gracchus' fictional death. In this context the pictures cease to be innocent travel snaps but instead take on a more sinister function as part of the deception wrought on the reader. I'm not sure what to make of it. would be interested in the opinions of anyone else who has read it.