One of Pakistan's handful of serious academics spoke yearningly of the liberal scholarly atmosphere he had recently enjoyed at a conference in Tehran.

ECONOMIST: Islamist militancy is alive and well

If Sebald has a greater literary intensity, it may be because he is more deeply, more yearningly pessimistic about the difficulty of historical retrieval.

NEWYORKER: Broken Record

They followed a path invisible under the snow, down toward the woods along the side of a big L-shaped field, the dog scouting ahead of them, racing back on her tracks to herd her humans together, straining her ears yearningly at the perturbed, watchful sheep.

NEWYORKER: She��s the One