Across the Land and the Water, By WG Sebald

This invaluable volume selects, in Iain Galbraith's graceful translations, poems from all stages of WG Sebald's life. Now a mythical figure, the late Bavarian-born, Norwich-settled author of Austerlitz and The Emigrants begins as a gnomic miniaturist.

Later poems reflect his voyages, into pasts and places, and often contain the kernel of his prose masterpieces. In glittering fragments, they compress a tragic history and "inquire/ Into the whereabouts of the dead".

Droll, wry and enigmatic, his poems register "what we have forgotten" .