Sebald's final collection of essays provides a powerful insight into the themes that came to dominate his life. Four pieces pay tribute to Corsica, weaving elegiacally between past and present. Sebald also examines the works of writers such as Gunter Grass, Bruce Chatwin and Kafka, showing both how literature can provide restitution for the injustices of the world and how such literature came to have so great an influence on him.