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The four lang narratives in W.G. Sebald's THE EMIGRANTS at first appear to be the straightforward biographies of four people in exile: a painter, an elderly Russian, the author's schoolteacher as well as his eccentric great-uncle Ambrose. Following (literarlly) in their footsteps, the narrator retraces routes which lead from Lithuania to London from Munich to Manchester, from the South German provinces to Switzerland, France, New York, Constantinople, and Jerusalem. Along with memories of the holocaust, he collects documents, diaries, pictures. Ech story is illustrated with enigmatic photographs, making THE EMIGRANTS seem at times almost like a family album - but of families destroyed The road to exile of four men. One is a teacher, fired by the Nazis from his job for having a Jewish ancestor, then inducted into the German army. Of the others, all Jews, one is a surgeon who commits suicide as he is unable to assimilate into British society, a second is an artist, a third becomes a butler in New York
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