The narrator, a scientist working on antibodies and suffering from emotional and mental illness, meets a Persian woman, the companion of a Swiss engineer, at an office in rural Austria. For the scientist, his endless talks with the strange Asian woman mean release from his condition, but for the Persian woman, as her own circumstances deteriorate, there is only one answer. "Thomas Bernhard was one of the few major writers of the second half of this century."-Gabriel Josipovici, Independent "With his death, European letters lost one of its most perceptive, uncompromising...
The narrator, a scientist working on antibodies and suffering from emotional and mental illness, meets a Persian woman, the companion of a Swiss engin...
Internationally acclaimed Austrian novelist, playwright, and memoirist Thomas Bernhard (1931-1989) has been compared to Kafka and Beckett, and critics have ranked his novels among the masterpieces of the twentieth century. But in fact he began his career in the 1950s as a poet, publishing three books of well-received verse before turning to fiction. In Hora Mortis / Under the Iron of the Moon is the first book of his expressionist-like poetry to be published in English. Bringing together Bernhard's second and third books of poetry, the collection's short, untitled lyrics reveal his...
Internationally acclaimed Austrian novelist, playwright, and memoirist Thomas Bernhard (1931-1989) has been compared to Kafka and Beckett, and crit...
Thomas Bernhard combined a searing wit and an unwavering gaze into the human condition. His debut novel, Frost, marked the beginning of one of the century's most provocative literary careers. Visceral, raw, singular, and unforgettable, Frost is the story of a friendship between a young man beginning his medical career and a painter in his final days. The youth has accepted an unusual assignment, to travel to a miserable mining town in the middle of nowhere in order to clinically--and secretly--observe and report on his mentor's reclusive brother, the painter Strauch....
Thomas Bernhard combined a searing wit and an unwavering gaze into the human condition. His debut novel, Frost, marked the beginning of one of...
Thomas Bernhard was one of the most original writers of the twentieth century. His formal innovation ranks with Beckett and Kafka, his outrageously cantankerous voice recalls Dostoevsky, but his gift for lacerating, lyrical, provocative prose is incomparably his own.One of Bernhard's most acclaimed novels, The Loser centers on a fictional relationship between piano virtuoso Glenn Gould and two of his fellow students who feel compelled to renounce their musical ambitions in the face of Gould's incomparable genius. One commits suicide, while the other-- the obsessive, witty, and...
Thomas Bernhard was one of the most original writers of the twentieth century. His formal innovation ranks with Beckett and Kafka, his outrageously ca...
The playwright and novelist Thomas Bernhard was one of the most widely translated and admired writers of his generation, winner of the three most coveted literary prizes in Germany. Gargoyles, one of his earliest novels, is a singular, surreal study of the nature of humanity.
One morning a doctor and his son set out on daily rounds through the grim mountainous Austrian countryside. They observe the colorful characters they encounter--from an innkeeper whose wife has been murdered to a crippled musical prodigy kept in a cage--coping with physical misery, madness, and...
The playwright and novelist Thomas Bernhard was one of the most widely translated and admired writers of his generation, winner of the three most c...
It is 1967. In separate wings of a Viennese hospital, two men lie bedridden. The narrator, named Thomas Bernhard, is stricken with a lung ailment; his friend Paul, nephew of the celebrated philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein, is suffering from one of his periodic bouts of madness. As their once-casual friendship quickens, these two eccentric men begin to discover in each other a possible antidote to their feelings of hopelessness and mortality a spiritual symmetry forged by their shared passion for music, strange sense of humor, disgust for bourgeois Vienna, and great fear in the face of death....
It is 1967. In separate wings of a Viennese hospital, two men lie bedridden. The narrator, named Thomas Bernhard, is stricken with a lung ailment; his...
The scientist Roithamer has dedicated the last six years of his life to "the Cone," an edifice of mathematically exact construction that he has erected in the center of his family's estate in honor of his beloved sister. Not long after its completion, he takes his own life. As an unnamed friend pieces together--literally, from thousands of slips of papers and one troubling manuscript--the puzzle of Rotheimer's breakdown, what emerges is the story of a genius ceaselessly compelled to correct and refine his perceptions until the only logical conclusion is the negation of his own soul....
The scientist Roithamer has dedicated the last six years of his life to "the Cone," an edifice of mathematically exact construction that he has erecte...
For five years, Konrad has imprisoned himself and his crippled wife in an abandoned lime works where he s conducted odd auditory experiments and prepared to write his masterwork, The Sense of Hearing. As the story begins, he s just blown the head off his wife with the Mannlicher carbine she kept strapped to her wheelchair. The murder and the bizarre life that led to it are the subject of a mass of hearsay related by an unnamed life-insurance salesman in a narrative as mazy, byzantine, and mysterious as the lime works Konrad s sanctuary and tomb."
For five years, Konrad has imprisoned himself and his crippled wife in an abandoned lime works where he s conducted odd auditory experiments and prepa...
Fiercely observed, often hilarious, and "reminiscent of Ibsen and Strindberg" (The New York Times Book Review), this exquisitely controversial novel was initially banned in its author's homeland. A searing portrayal of Vienna's bourgeoisie, it begins with the arrival of an unnamed writer at an 'artistic dinner' hosted by a composer and his society wife--a couple he once admired and has come to loathe. The guest of honor, a distinguished actor from the Burgtheater, is late. As the other guests wait impatiently, they are seen through the critical eye of the writer, who narrates a...
Fiercely observed, often hilarious, and "reminiscent of Ibsen and Strindberg" (The New York Times Book Review), this exquisitely controversial ...
The last work of fiction by one of the twentieth century s greatest artists, Extinction is widely considered Thomas Bernhard s magnum opus. Franz-Josef Murau the intellectual black sheep of a powerful Austrian land-owning family lives in Rome in self-imposed exile, surrounded by a coterie of artistic and intellectual friends. On returning from his sister s wedding on the family estate of Wolfsegg, having resolved never to go home again, Murau receives a telegram informing him of the death of his parents and brother in a car crash. Not only must he now go back, he must do so as the...
The last work of fiction by one of the twentieth century s greatest artists, Extinction is widely considered Thomas Bernhard s magnum opus.
