Amongst the myths surrounding Sebald, the most common misconception is the belief that Austerlitz was the last book published during his lifetime. Actually, For Years Now, a collection of short poetry, appeared just a few days before his death. However, the widely praised novel that placed him firmly on the short list for the Nobel Prize for Literature, has seemed to be the more fitting conclusion to the life story of a great writer cut tragically short.

Yet For Years Now, his collaboration with the British artist Tess Jaray, is an extraordinary book, which has been much undervalued. It combines short to very short poems by Sebald with monochrome patterns by Jaray. The volume thereby aims to break with several expectations Sebald's readers then had of his work: as well his first collaboration, it was his first published collection of poetry, and – this is a crucial point we will later return to – his one and only book written in English. In 1997 Sebald asserted in an interview that making the transition to writing in a foreign language ‘is a very, very risky and harrowing decision. And so far I have tried to avoid making that decision’ (EM 51). Yet taking risky decisions, deviating from the prescribed path and coming up with books unlike the ones that came before is very much characteristic of a wilful side of Sebald that is rarely acknowledged. Following the long novel, strewn with his trademark grainy black and white images, For Years Now delivers dense, enigmatic poetic vignettes and vivid, colour-intense plates, making it at odds with its popular predecessor. Sebald was not one for the limelight and despised public appearances – speaking at less than a handful of literary readings in the United Kingdom.