Silent CatastrophesFrom acclaimed critic, novelist and academic W. G. Sebald, author of Austerlitz and The Rings of Saturn, comes a collection of essays on the Austrian writers who meant so much to him. As a German in self chosen exile from his country of birth, Sebald found a particular affinity with these writers from a neighbouring nation. The traumatic evolution of Austria from a vast empire to a diminutive Alpine republic, followed by its annexation by Germany,