"Santner has many interesting things to say, and works ingeniously to bring this broad range of interests under the single umbrella of the ’creaturely’. . . . A challenging but rewarding attempt to explore the intersection between aesthetic and ethico-political strategies in both Sebald and twentieth-century thought in general."

Ben Hutchinson | MLR

On Creaturely Life will likely be read by those who have read Agamben’s Homo Sacer and The State of Exception. . . . But I would argue, however, that Santner’s book invites a much wider readership. The concerns of the creature presented here open onto other areas of interest, including the extensive and diverse writings on ’animality’ and contemporary philosophy’s engagement with religion . . . as well as the ways in which contemporary art engages the life sciences."

Eugene Thacker | Leonardo

"A sustained meditation on the nature of the ’human,’ the relationship between life and the political, and the possibility of ethical relations in a posthuman world in which life finds itself subjected to particular forms of violence in the political domain. As such, it will be indispensable reading for both Sebald scholars and those intrerested in contemporary critical theory."

Markus Zisselsberger | German Studies Review

"An admirable critical accomplishment, [the book] reveals Santner as a master choreographerof ideas central to the tradition of German (not just German-Jewish) modernism."

Richard T. Gray | MLQ

"A critical masterpiece, which conceives of itself as an ethico-political intervention on the scene of contemporary cultural and literary criticism, a scene that is defined by a complex configuration of diverse material. . . . On Creaturely Life steps on this scene with a fascinating configuration of its own, one that draws upon and draws into proximity a number of famous texts from the German-Jewish tradtion of the first half of the 20th century."

Volker Kaiser | Monatsheft