The following version of this book was used to create the guide: Sebald, W. G. Austerlitz. Modern Library, 2011.

W. G. Sebald's novel Austerlitz is written from the first person point of view and in the past tense. Spanning continents, eras, and generations, the novel defies notions of the conventional linear narrative plot line in order to enact its themes. For the sake of clarity, this summary relies upon the present tense and offers a linear mode of explanation.

In 1967, the unnamed first person narrator travels to Antwerp, Belgium. While sitting in the train station, he meets a man named Jacques Austerlitz and the two strike up a conversation. Austerlitz is a professor and scholar and the narrator is taken by his knowledge of architectural history in particular. Over the course of the years that follow their original meeting, the narrator and Austerlitz run into one another numerous times without planning.

Then, in 1996, Austerlitz contacts the narrator after a long period of silence and the men reconnect once more. When they reunite, Austerlitz asks the narrator if he will listen to him tell him the story of his life. The narrator agrees.

Austerlitz grew up in Bala, Wales with his foster parents Emyr and Gwendolyn Elias. Although this was the only life Austerlitz ever knew, he constantly felt alienated and displaced. He was therefore relieved when the Eliases sent him away to a private school called Stower Range. Unlike his classmates, Austerlitz loved boarding school. He played rugby, discovered his love for reading, writing, and photography, and excelled in the classroom. Meanwhile, he befriended a classmate named Gerald Fitzpatrick. Gerald and Austerlitz became so close that Austerlitz would spend all of his school holidays with Gerald's family.

When Austerlitz was 15, Gwendolyn died and Emyr was admitted to an asylum. Shortly thereafter, the Stower Grange headmaster informed Austerlitz that his name was not Dafydd Elias, as he had been called throughout his childhood, but Jacques Austerlitz. This was all the information he had been given about Austerlitz's origins. Although intrigued by this revelation, Austerlitz did nothing to investigate his past in the following years.

As an adult, Austerlitz was in London when he suffered a nervous breakdown. While wandering the city one night, he ended up at Liverpool Street Station and suddenly began to remember his past. These memories in turn inspired him to research his life before living with the Eliases. He soon discovered that his parents were Agáta Austerlitzová and Maximilian Aychenwald, a Jewish couple living in Prague during the 1930s. Just prior to the Nazi invasion, Maximilian fled to Paris and Agáta sent Austerlitz to London on a transport for Jewish children. Not long later, Agáta was deported to the Terezín ghetto.

Austerlitz visits Prague, Terezín, and Paris in an attempt to discover the truth of his parents' fates. He does learn more about their experiences, but this information cannot ultimately assuage his grief and sorrow. He ends up taking a train from Prague to London in order to retrace his childhood journey. This venture reawakens more of his memories. Shortly thereafter, he moves back to Paris and moves into the neighborhood where his father once lived. While here, he finishes telling the narrator the last of his story. He then invites the narrator to stay in his London home whenever he likes. The narrator does return to this setting after leaving Austerlitz and finds himself still thinking about his friend and his story.