I have finally found an image to explain Sebald's fiction. He is a flâneur but a flâneur in the worlds of culture and history. A melancholy flâneur, with a penchant for savouring lost time.
This book is ostensibly an account of a walking holiday around a small section of the East Coast of England, south of Norwich. Through his wanderings he connects with former inhabitants and recounts their lives, their artistic accomplishments and the usually sad state of their former homes and mansions. He explores the rise and fall of towns as fishing dies out, as farming fades, recounting both their heydays and their decline. Fallen aristocratic families eking out an existence in the dilapidated remains of once glorious homes; the story of Joseph Conrad, who once worked on ships in the area; Swinburne; other smaller artists, collectors, authors who live in the area.
He is like a traveller, and his books a record of the meeting of his mind with the ghosts of the past.
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