William Merwin

William Merwin is a celebrated poet who has received the Pulitzer Prize, the Bollingen Prize, and the Tanning Prize for mastery in the art of poetry.

Austerlitz by W.G. Sebald (Random House, $26). This book moves inward from the aftermath of the horrors of Nazi Germany, circuitously, obliquely, in radiant detail, and in prose of hypnotic authority. Sebald was one of the most revelatory writers of our time, and this book was the culmination of his artistry.

The Sleeping Lord by David Jones (out of print). David Jones is the great overlooked poet of the 20th century. He is difficult, as Joyce is difficult, but his voice brings us the pitch and power of the Welsh bards of the Arthurian age, and this book gathers some of his finest and most memorable writing.

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The Drowned and the Saved (Vintage Books, $12), Survival in Auschwitz (Scribner, $12), The Reawakening (Scribner, $12) by Primo Levi. These three books are phases of one story: Primo Levi’s imprisonment by the Nazis, his survival, and the aftermath—the final part as luminously sharp and indelible as the rest. Levi’s humanity and dignity, and the etched clarity of his writing, occupy a unique place in the literature that I have read on this subject.

An Imaginary Life by David Malouf (Vintage Books, $12). A compelling evocation of the character, destiny, and transformation of a self-indulgent, worldly man suddenly thrust into circumstances in which nothing that he knew or had been known for count for anything.

The Book of Ebenezer Le Page by G.B. Edwards (out of print). A work of fiction that is one of the great “lives” I know. The story of one man on the island of Guernsey, from youth to age, told with an authenticity that makes it hard to believe that Edwards never wrote, or at least left, anything else.

Forests

Heart of Darkness