Three men walk the pages of W. G. Sebald’s first literary work – the painter Mathias Grünewald, the botanist G. W. Steller and W. G. Sebald himself. Written as a long poem in three parts, After Nature delves into each of these lives in turn, teasing out the haunting uncertainties of the past and revealing the terrible burden that history places on all of our shoulders.

‘A deeply intelligent book, but also a marvellously warm, exciting and compassionate one’ 
Andrew Motion

‘Graceful, allusive, serious, but also immensely readable’ 
Sunday Telegraph

‘A debut of rare poetic grandeur. Abounds in passages of great natural beauty … a truly magisterial work of translation’ 
Irish Times

‘A marvellous work. A grim and beautiful poem, complex yet bruisingly clear’ 
Scotsman

‘Compelling, puzzling. When you read Sebald you are transported to another realm. Reading him is a truly sublime experience’ 
Literary Review

‘A mixture of hard scholarly fact, delicate imaginative embroidery and a kind of extended musing upon the nature of existence’ 
Financial Times

‘Astonishing writing. A true poet at work. Sebald’s most ambitious work’ 
Evening Standard