Winfried Georg Sebald (18 May 1944 – 14 December 2001), known as W. G. Sebald or (as he preferred) Max Sebald, was a German writer and academic. At the time of his death at the age of 57, he was, according to The New Yorker, widely recognized for his extraordinary contribution to world literature.

Sebald's works are largely concerned with the themes of memory, loss of memory, and identity, both personal and collective, as well as decay, whether of civilizations, traditions, or physical objects. They represent attempts to reconcile himself with, and deal in literary terms with, the trauma of the Second World War and its effect on the German people.

At the time of his death, he was being cited by many literary critics as one of the greatest living authors and was tipped as a possible future recipient of the Nobel Prize in Literature.