The Emigrants Audiobook By W. G. Sebald cover art

The Emigrants

 Preview

Audible Standard 30-day free trial

Try Standard free
Select 1 audiobook a month from our entire collection of titles.
Yours as long as you’re a member.
Get unlimited access to bingeable podcasts.
Standard auto renews for $8.99 a month after 30 days. Cancel anytime.

The Emigrants

By: W. G. Sebald
Narrated by: Mel Foster
Try Standard free

$8.99 a month after 30 days. Cancel anytime.

Buy for $18.18

Buy for $18.18

A devastating novel about memory, alienation, and trauma from acclaimed novelist W. G. Sebald.

The four long narratives in The Emigrants appear at first to be the straightforward biographies of four Germans in exile. Sebald reconstructs the lives of a painter, a doctor, an elementary-school teacher, and Great Uncle Ambrose. Following (literally) in their footsteps, the narrator retraces routes of exile which lead from Lithuania to London, from Munich to Manchester, from the South German provinces to Switzerland, France, New York, Constantinople, and Jerusalem. Along with memories, documents, and diaries of the Holocaust, he collects photographs—the enigmatic snapshots which stud The Emigrants and bring to mind family photo albums. Sebald combines precise documentary with fictional motifs, and as he puts the question to realism, the four stories merge into one unfathomable requiem.

©1992 Vito von Eichborn GmbH & Co Verlag KG, Frankfurt am Main (P)2018 Brilliance Publishing, Inc., all rights reserved. English translation © 1996 by The Harvill Press Literary Fiction 20th Century Modern Fiction Travel Writing & Commentary Genre Fiction Biographies & Memoirs Art & Literature Authors
All stars
Most relevant
Sebald masterfully blurs the line between fact and fiction. The journey into the live of the ordinary become transformed into the extraordinary.
The reading is an excellent performance by Mel Foster.

A Masterpiece

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
The reader barks out the lines like he’s making announcements over a high school PA system and can’t pronounce French. Much of the book is set in France. Does the book a huge disservice.

Embarrassing, horrible recording

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
Sebald was extraordinary, and I'm thankful to have read The Emigrants a few times before encountering this audio version. Mel Foster's performance here is, sadly, tone deaf. Sebald's voice is melancholy, patiently observant, enigmatic, and at times quietly yet deeply unnerving. Sebald's self-effacing act of witnessing the experiences of individuals who more-or-less directly experienced the Holocaust is transfomed by Foster's rendering into a string of tales told by a jaunty, world-travelling raconteur. I grant that this was a difficult project since Sebald's voice slides more deeply into the subjectivity of his subjects as the book proceeds. I only wish that this audio version had been undertaken with more empathy for its subjects and a deeper understanding of Sebald's work.

Amazing book, poor performance

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
I have both read and listened to a reading of this book in hopes of understanding the praise it has garnered. I’m stumped. Further, the audible recording was particularly irritating since given the substantial amount of French and German text, one would have thought a narrator could be found who actually spoke at least one if not bottom these very mainstream languages. That was not to be, however, as both were brutally mangled throughout the recording.

Disappointed

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.