The central character of the book is the author himself, W.G. Sebald was born in the Bavarian Alps, from where he studied at the Freiburg University before moving to Britain (East Anglia) and settling down.
As a character within his own book Sebald takes the central position of the entire narrative: the entire novel is written in the first person style, and the authors own recollections, studies, feelings and dreams become important pieces of the narrative and the clues which drive the book onwards. As the author is casting Himself-As-Narrator as a character, he himself takes on a slightly fictitious air as he attempts to perform upon himself the same kind of treatment that we might expect of a fictional character within a novel. Just as in a normal work of fiction we investigate the actors actions, their feelings and responses; we are doing the same to the author himself - a technique that clearly marks this book as owing itself to Postmodernism.
Sebald-as-Character appears to be a man confused, amused and amazed at life in general, and the passage of events that make up 'Time' in particular. This obsession is in part motivated by his own feelings of internal desolation after experiencing the loss of a friend and suffering a nervous - emotional breakdown. As he reflects on his emotions he writes about a pilgrimage he took a year earlier when he walked between just outside of Lowestoft to Bungay in his home country of Suffolk, and all of the thoughts, recollections and salient feelings he experienced there. His actions as a character almost fade into insignificance (the act of physically walking) as we hear the narrator's interior monologue and learn of the interior journeys and connections that he is making. We can surmise that whilst the book is set within Sebald-as-Narrator and Sebald-as-Character, it is really a method to use himself as a method to explore himself, his interior landscape and his psyche.
