Originally published in German: München : C. Hanser, 2001. This translation originally published: New York : Random House, c2001.

Includes bibliographical references.

"The story of a man's search for the answer to his life's central riddle. A small child when he comes to England on a Kindertransport in the summer of 1939, Jacques Austerlitz is told nothing of his real family by the Welsh Methodist minister and his wife who raise him. When he is a much older man, fleeting memories return to him, and obeying an instinct he only dimly understands, Austerlitz follows their trail back to the world he left behind a half century before. There, faced with the void at the heart of twentieth-century Europe, he struggles to rescue his heritage from oblivion."--P. [2] of cover.

Winner of the National Book Critics Cricle Award.