The Rings of Saturn

Hosted by Chris Piuma and Suzanne Conklin Akbari

Months after this experience, which I still cannot explain, I was on Dunwich Heath once more in a dream, walking the endlessly winding paths again, and again I could not find my way out of the maze which I was convinced had been created solely for me. Dead tired and ready to lie down anywhere, as dusk fell I gained a raised area where a little Chinese pavilion had been built, as in the middle of the yew maze at Somerleyton. And when I looked down from this vantage point I saw the labyrinth, the light sandy ground, the sharply delineated contours of hedge taller than a man and almost pitch-black now – a pattern simple in comparison with the tortuous trail I had behind me, but one which I knew in my dream, with absolute certainty, represented a cross-section of my brain.

W.G. Sebald’s book The Rings of Saturn is hard to pin down — is it a memoir? an essay? a novel? a prose poem? Whatever it is, it’s a remarkable reflection of how connected the world is, and how moments and memories and fragments of history and biography can all echo and resound across time. Chris and Suzanne trace out some of these paths of connections that Sebald walks, and think about how the book pulls together story, photography, and time.