SOURCE: Landon, Philip. Review of Vertigo, by W. G. Sebald. Review of Contemporary Fiction 20, no. 3 (fall 2000): 137.

In the following review, Landon offers a positive assessment of Vertigo.

The appearance in English of Sebald's first novel will be warmly greeted by those who know the two later books already translated from the German by Michael Hulse: The Rings of Saturn (1995) and The Emigrants (1997). You need a list to suggest the scope, originality, and richness of Sebald's prose. Scrapbook, essay collection, personal diary, historical fiction, novel of ideas—whatever you want to call it, Vertigo diverts and surprises at every turn, and bears the unmistakable stamp of maturity and erudition.

Sebald is a deeply personal writer who views the European experience from a wide-angle perspective, reaffirming humanism through curiosity and tact. There is no complacency or cynicism in any of his books, whose quiet decency renders garish the overbearing and...