The Sebald Lecture: Absent Jews and Invisible Executioners

Where: Kings Place, London N1, United Kingdom

Curated by The British Centre for Literary Translation at the University of East Anglia and The Society of Authors

WG Sebald’s novels are almost unique among the narrative fiction written by non-Jewish Germans in the postwar period for their depiction of the lives of Jews affected by the Holocaust, but to what extent was Sebald’s approach to the Holocaust itself symptomatic of a deeper and intransigent form of denial?

In this lecture Will Self will analyse Sebald’s Holocaust writing in the light of the evolving historical understanding of the Holocaust and the part the German people took in it. Self will ask whether, when it comes to such crimes against humanity it is possible for their to be a literature either by, or about the perpetrators, and what purpose such writings might fulfill?

The prizes being awarded this evening are as follows:

The Premio Valle Inclán – translation from the Spanish
The Saif Ghobash-Banipal Prize – translation from the Arabic
The Schlegel-Tieck Prize – translation from the German
The Scott Moncrieff Prize – translation from the French
The Vondel Prize – translation from the Dutch and Flemish
The Bernard Shaw Prize – translation from the Swedish
The Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation Prize – translation from the Portuguese
The Rossica Translation Prize – translation from the Russian