Ignore the movie tie-in cover, my version of this book has a brain that looks like a butt. Think of that. This is a beautiful meditation on human exploration and scientific drive. It is dry but romantic but philosophical. As the book, and all adaptations, say, "We have no need for other worlds. We need mirrors."

This work, along with Austerlitz, Rings of Saturn and Vertigo, is an erudite, almost stream-of-consciousness, run-on (in a good way), moreover, melding of fact and fiction and travel and history. Come to think of it, the story never seems like a blending of fact or fiction, Sebald probably operates in the realm of fiction to free the work when everything reads as peculiar and particular biography. Highly recommended.