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Reading lists

Must-read classics in translation

A Comedy

Old Masters

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'Bernhard is one of the masters of contemporary European fiction'George Steiner 
 
Old Masters (1985) is Thomas Bernhard's devilishly funny story about the friendship between two old men. 
 
For over thirty years Reger, a music critic, has sat on the same bench in front of a Tintoretto painting in a Viennese museum, thinking and railing against contemporary society, his fellow men, artists, the weather, even the state of public lavatories. His friend Atzbacher has been summoned to meet him, and through his eyes we learn more about Reger - the tragic death of his wife, his thoughts of suicide and, eventually, the true purpose of their appointment. At once pessimistic and exuberant, rancorous and hilarious, Old Masters is a richly satirical portrait of culture, genius, nationhood, class, the value of art and the pretensions of humanity.

Thomas Bernhard (1931-1989) was one of the greatest German-language novelists and playwrights of the 20th century. Much hated in his native Austria for his highly inventive derision for all things Austrian (which culminated in his will, which banned further publication of his work there), Bernhard wrote a series of harsh, inventive and brilliant novels, including Gargoyles¸ Correction, Wittgenstein's Nephew, Old Masters, Yes and Extinction.

'I hate walking, he says, it seems so pointless to me. I walk, and while I am walking I keep thinking how I hate walking' 
 
Old Masters (1985) is Thomas Bernhard's devilishly funny story about the friendship between two old men. For over thirty years Reger, a music critic, has sat on the same bench in front of a Tintoretto painting in a Viennese museum, thinking and railing against contemporary society, his fellow men, artists, the weather, even the state of public lavatories. His friend Atzbacher has been summoned to meet him, and through his eyes we learn more about Reger - the tragic death of his wife, his thoughts of suicide and, eventually, the true purpose of their appointment. At once pessimistic and exuberant, rancorous and hilarious, Old Masters is a richly satirical portrait of culture, genius, nationhood, class, the value of art and the pretensions of humanity.

Gathering Evidence

Written with a dark pain and drama that recalls the novels of Dickens, Gathering Evidence is a powerful and compelling memoir of youth by one of the twentieth century's most gifted writers.

A writer of great originality and fascination

Breathless, relentlessly compulsive... A remarkable literary contribution

Thomas Bernhard was born in Holland in 1931 but grew up in Austria.  His interest in music and theatre led him to study at the Akademie Mozarteum in Salzburg.  He wrote a quantity of poetry, several novels, short stories and plays and three volumes of autobiography.  He died in 1989.

Born in 1931, the illegitimate child of an abandoned mother, Thomas Bernhard was brought up by an eccentric grandmother and adored grandfather.  Tormented as a young student in a right-wing, catholic Austria, Bernhard ran away from home aged fifteen.  At eighteen he contracted pneumonia.  Placed in a hospital ward for the old and terminally ill, he observed with unflinching acuity protracted suffering and death.  From the age of 21, everything he wrote was shaped by the urgency of a dying man's testament - his witness, the quintessence of his life and knowledge - and where this account of his life ends, his art begins.

Thomas Bernhard

Sophie Wilkins

'‘One of the darkest and funniest writers... A must read for everybody’ Karl Ove Knausgaard 
 
After a severe illness, the unnamed narrator of Correction returns to Austria to sift through the writings of his childhood friend, Roithamer - a brilliant but tormented scientist. The self-exiled son of a wealthy family, Roithamer dedicates his unexpected inheritance to an impossible vision: constructing a perfect Cone in the remote Kobernausser forest. His pursuit of perfection spirals into obsession, pushing him toward inevitable tragedy. 
 
Thomas Bernhard’s masterwork of precision and intensity, Correction is a haunting meditation on genius, madness, and the cost of human intellect.

Thomas Bernhard

Books by Thomas Bernhard

Articles featuring Thomas Bernhard

Must-read classics in translation

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