SOURCE: Brookner, Anita. “Pursued across Europe by Ghosts and Unease.” Spectator 283, no. 8941 (18-25 December 1999): 65-6.

In the following review, Brookner admires Sebald's disquieting description of anxiety, displacement, and solitary travels in Vertigo.

A fine array of symptoms is on offer in Vertigo, the first volume of what would become a celebrated trilogy. In The Emigrants Professor Sebald traced the lives of four exiles; in The Rings of Saturn he took a protracted walk around and across East Anglia, which is now his home. In Vertigo he is on the move again, not on foot, but in a series of displacements no less extreme and rather more disturbing, although he offers no comment on his particular form of experience. In Vienna he was unable to proceed beyond the boundaries of three streets, where he spent his days and part of his nights until his shoes wore out. He also...