Leavetaking

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A brilliant and brutally honest autobiographical novel, long out of print, captures the narrator's quest to escape a repressive upper-middle-class upbringing and pursue a life as an artist. This Sebaldian narrative unfolds in a single incantatory paragraph, detailing a childhood and adolescence in Berlin between the wars. The story delves into family life, marked by the early death of the beloved sister Margit, a strained relationship with parents, and the fantasies of youth, all set against a backdrop of rising anti-Semitism that forces the family to relocate frequently, intensifying the narrator's restlessness. While largely oblivious to world events, the young narrator is fixated on becoming an artist, a dream thwarted by his environment and notably by his mother, a former actress who destroys his paintings during their moves. Ultimately, he finds guidance in an older mentor, Harry Haller, a fictionalized version of Hermann Hesse, who inspires and supports him. With Haller's influence, the narrator embarks on a journey toward independence. Intensely lyrical and imaginatively powerful, this work vividly evokes a lost world and the narrator's evolving consciousness. The NEVERSINK LIBRARY celebrates overlooked and underappreciated books, presenting them in well-designed editions to enrich our culture.