Blurring the Boundaries: History, Memory and Imagination in the Works of W G Sebald

Walter Benjamin in his essay on Marcel Proust claims that “all great works of literature establish a genre or dissolve one - that they are, in other words, special cases.” When W G Sebald’s fiction was first published many critics found it difficult to define his style or categorise his work, and indeed some claimed he had created a new genre. His work has been variously described as “literary monism,” a “generic hybridity” and “documentary novels” and Joyce Hackett claims he has “reinvent[ed] the diary as his own genre.”