W. G. Sebald · 1995 · overland

W. G. Sebald's 1995 masterpiece, a melancholy walking tour of the Suffolk coast undertaken in August 1992 to dispel the emptiness left by a long stint of work. As Sebald trudges from Lowestoft down through Southwold and the drowned city of Dunwich to Orford and inland, the landscape keeps opening into long digressions on silk, herring, colonial atrocity, and the slow ruin of all things, a book that helped define the literature of psychogeography.

1. 1
   Lowestoft

   Sebald sets out down the Suffolk coast from the faded resort town and its melancholy pier.

2. 2
   Southwold

   Footsore, he rests on Gunhill above the sea and visits the Sailors Reading Room.

3. 3
   Dunwich

   On to the drowned medieval city, most of it long since crumbled into the waves.

4. 4
   Orford

   South to Orford and its shingle ness, with the secret military testing grounds offshore.

5. 5
   Woodbridge

   Then inland up the Deben, past the grave of the poet Edward FitzGerald.

6. 6
   Bungay

   And north through the Waveney valley toward the journey's quiet end.