WINNER OF THE NOBEL PRIZE FOR LITERATURE ' Repetition made a great and, as I have since learned, lasting impression on me' W. G. Sebald Filip Kobal, an Austrian teenager, is on the trail of his missing older brother Gregor, who he never knew. All he has is two of Gregor's books: a school copy book, and a dictionary in which certain words have been marked. As he enters Slovenia on his journey, Filip discovers something else entirely: the transformative power of language to describe the world, and the unnerving joy of being an outsider in a strange land. 'One of the most moving evocations I have ever read of what it means to be alive, to walk upon this earth' Gabriel Josipovici Translated by Ralph Manheim