''A book of excruciating sobriety and warmth and a magical concreteness of observation... I know of no book which conveys more about that complex fate, being a European at the end of European civilization'' Susan Sontag

At first The Emigrants appears simply to document the lives of four Jewish émigrés in the twentieth century. But gradually, as Sebald's precise, almost dreamlike prose begins to draw their stories, the four narrations merge into one overwhelming evocation of exile and loss.

''An unconsoling masterpiece... Exquisitely written and exquisitely translated...a true work of art'' Spectator