"The Rings of Saturn" begins as the record of a journey on foot through coastal
East Anglia. From Lowestoft to Bungay, Sebald's own story becomes the conductor
of evocations of people and cultures past and present: of Chateaubriand, Thomas
Browne, Swinburne and Conrad, of fishing fleets, skulls and silkworms. The resul
t is an intricately patterned and haunting book on the transience of all things
human.
