Contemporary Reads: Austerlitz

Austerlitz is a strange novel. Its strangeness partly derives from its extremely long paragraphs, its pictures and its lack of chapters. But also, from the unnamed narrator about whom the reader will practically know nothing. This narrator will converse with Austerlitz over the years as the meet in different European locations such as Antwerpt, London or Paris.

We are told of Austerlitz's childhood in rural Wales where he was taken and fostered by a church minister and his wife before World War II. And we are also told about his youth and how he became interested in his origins only late in life. An only child of Jewish parents in 1930s Czechoslovakia, Austerlitz was sent to Britain by her mother, Agata, shortly before she was transported to Theresienstadt by the Germans. His father, Maximilian, was a Socialist politician who had settled in Paris. Most of this information Austerlitz obtains from his former neighbour and friend of the family, Vera.

This book is strange, moving and meticulously detailed.