Unrecounted | Fiction - www.zzdbook.com

Unrecounted

Feb 25, 2026 10:25 AM

Author:W. G. Sebald,Jan Peter Tripp,Michael Hamburger

Unrecounted

Unrecounted is a book of poems and images from one of the most admired European writers, W.G. Sebald, and his friend and collaborator, the German artist Jan Peter Tripp.

For a number of years until Sebald's death in 2001, the two exchanged poems and lithographs. Unrecounted is the startlingly original result of this long artistic friendship - a creative dialogue inspired by shared concerns. Tripp's lithographs, which portray pairs of eyes - among them those of Beckett, Borges, Proust - combine with W.G. Sebald's words in Unrecounted to speak of moments salvaged from time passing, of our eyes bearing witness, and of memory and remembrance.

'Condenses Sebald's complex visual imagination to its poetic core' Scotland on Sunday

'Elegiac, enhancing ... Sebald will not be forgotten' Time Out

'A haunting testament to Sebald's singular and lasting vision' Observer

'The magic of W.G. Sebald's incandescent body of work continues to unfold, with this unexpected collaboration' Susan Sontag

'Anyone with a serious interest in fiction should read Sebald' Daily Telegraph

W.G. Sebald was born in Germany in 1944 and settled permanently in England in 1970, where he was Professor of European Literature at the University of East Anglia until his death in 2001. He is the author of four works of fiction: The Emigrants, which won the Berlin Literature Prize, the Heinrich Heine Prize, and the Joseph Breitbach Prize; The Rings of Saturn; Vertigo; and Austerlitz, which was awarded the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize and the National Book Critics Circle Award. Alongside this stand books of poetry For Years Now, After Nature, Unrecounted, and Across the Land and the Water, and the non-fiction books On the Natural History of Destruction and Campo Santo. Jan Peter Tripp was born in 1945 and lives and works in Alsace.

Reviews

He is this country's unrivalled literary giant...a fascinatingly strange, unique and gripping novel

—— Independent on Sunday

Ian McEwan’s highly-charged story of sin and forgiveness is masterfully told. Tense, shocking and heart-breaking in equal turn.

—— Grazia

Atonement is a masterpiece...it is also an elegy to a time which, however volatile, still had certainties

—— The Times

A beautiful and majestic fictional panorama

—— John Updike

A deft and brilliant exploration of guilt, family and the rippling repercussions of a single moment in life

—— Red

A superb achievement

—— New York Times

A magnificent novel

—— Independent

The best thing he has ever written

—— Observer

McEwan's best novel so far, his masterpiece

—— Evening Standard

Subtle as well as powerful, adeptly encompassing comedy as well as atrocity, Atonement is a richly intricate book... A superb achievement

—— Sunday Times

An evocative depiction of the dangers of innocence and ignorance in the face of uncomfortable reality.

—— Herald

Brilliantly explores the currents of guilt, shame and anger... Utterly satisfying, complete

—— Scotsman

A complex, thought-provoking novel.

—— Fanny Blake , Woman and Home

Smoulders with slow-burning menace

—— The Times

Just brilliant, particularly for the clever, poignant final chapter. I loved the shattering, satisfying twist

—— Tasmina Perry , Red

I love being transported to a different era and this masterly novel succeeds at every level

—— Stephanie Beacham , Daily Express

This is a rare creature - a heartbreaker with genuine heart. Wonderful

—— Herald

One of the great unrequited love stories

—— Eve Magazine

An astonishing narrative... a novel that stick with you long after you finish it

—— Rich Clarke , Week

Simply stunning from beginning to end, this tense, evocative, beautifully-drawn novel transported me back to the 1930s and 40s, swept me away - and broke my heart too.

—— .

Atonement is a magnificent novel, shaped and paced with awesome confidence and eloquence

—— Independent

Subtle as well as powerful, adeptly encompassing comedy as well as atrocity, Atonement is a richly intricate book- A superb achievement which combines a magnificent display of the powers of the imagination with a probing exploration of them

—— Sunday Times

The narrative, as always with McEwan, smoulders with slow-burning menace. You know that, even as you savour the voluptuous sentences, something terrible will happen and sure enough it does

—— The Times

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