THE MASTER OF MEMORY

WG Sebald’s mother, Rosa, once said that her son had been born without a skin, so that he was unable to protect himself from being overwhelmed by the suffering of others, and even normal experience was traumatic for him. For Carole Angier, the author of this unauthorised biography, something about this acute sensitivity made Sebald “the most exquisite writer”, a man oppressed by experience and the burden of his mind, who believed that the remembering of great injustices was an attempt, however small, at what he called “restitution”.

In Janet Malcolm’s memorable dictum, biographers are burglars, robbing the lives of their subjects. But what Angier realised, as she embarked on her