The Emigrants

New York: New Directions, 1996. First American edition. Jacket spine slightly toned, light wear to extremities. Generally a fine copy. 8vo. Translated by Michael Hulse. 237 pages. Quarter blue cloth, grey paper boards. In the pictorial dust jacket designed by Semadar Megged. Signed on the title: "N.Y. 15 X 2001 W. G. Sebald." This was the date of Sebald's reading with Susan Sontag at the 92nd Street Y where he read from his novel "Austerlitz." Signed Sebald titles are very uncommon.

This is one of Sebald's last public appearances. Sebald's last public appearance in the UK was at the South Bank Centre on 24 September 2001. In that same month, (truncated) Sebald gave his last interview to Maya Jaggi (published in The Guardian 21 December 2001). After this evening at the 92nd Street Y, Sebald spoke the following day at the Friends Select School in Philadelphia, and then the Los Angeles Public Library on 17 October. He gave two readings in San Francisco and Seattle, leaving the United States for the last time on 20 October. His final two public appearances were in Stuttgart on the 17th and 18th of November. See Richard Sheppard, "W. G. Sebald: A Chronology," in Saturn's Moons, ed. Jo Catling and Richard Hibbitt, 2011, pp. 619ff. (Inventory #: 410756)