The Emigrants W G Sebald Michael Hulse by W. G. Sebald, Michael Hulse 9780811221290, 0811221296, B00B20Q4A2 instant download after payment.

Published to enormous critical acclaim in the US, The Emigrants has been acclaimed as "one of the best novels to appear since World War II" (Review of Contemporary Fiction) and three times chosen as the 1996 International Book of the Year. 

The poignant and acclaimed novel about the beauty of lost things, while the protagonist traces the lives of four elderly German/Jewish exiles.  The Emigrants is composed of four long narratives which at first appear to be straightforward accounts of the lives of several Jewish exiles in England, Austria, and America. The narrator literally follows their footsteps, studding each story with photographs and creating the impression that the reader is poring over a family album. But gradually, W. G. Sebald's prose, which combines documentary description with almost hallucinatory fiction, exerts a new magic, and the four stories merge into one. Illustrated throughout with enigmatic photographs. 

"An evocative work by a prize-winning German author, now England-based, consists of four distinct stories of Jewish emigration over the last century: in each piece, not only the personal drama but the zeitgeist of the occasion is cannily, compellingly revealed. Bending each narrative into a form of personal reminiscence, complete with photographs woven into the text, the tribulation of each elusive subject is patiently uncovered by the narrator... The pervasive melancholy in these lives that are locked in tragedy is formidable, but at the same time the lyricism and immediacy of the narratives are marvellous to behold: a profound and moving work that should leave no reader unaffected."  -  Kirkus Reviews