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Wittgenstein's Nephew
A Friendship
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Check link for latest rating. ( 6,656 ratings, 765 reviews)
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Format: Paperback / softback
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See moreReissued with stunning artwork by Leanne Shapton and a new afterword by Ben Lerner, Wittgenstein's Nephew is a memento mori of restless genius.
'If you haven't read Bernhard, you will not know of the most radical advance in fiction since Joyce ... My advice: dive in.' - Lucy Ellmann (author of the 2019 Booker Prize-shortlisted Ducks, Newburyport).
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Description
'Furious, obsessive, scathing, absolutely hilarious and oddly beautiful.' - Claire Messud
It is 1967. Two men lie bedridden in separate wings of a Viennese hospital. The narrator, Thomas Bernhard, is stricken with a lung ailment; his friend Paul, nephew of Ludwig Wittgenstein, is suffering from one of his periodic bouts of madness.
As their friendship quickens, these two eccentric men discover in each other an antidote to their feelings of despair on the unexpected strength of what they share - a spiritual symmetry forged by their love of music, black humour, disgust for bourgeois Vienna, and fear of mortality.
A restless blend of fiction and memoir, Wittgenstein's Nephew is not only a haunting meditation on the artist's struggle to maintain a foothold on reality, but an impassioned eulogy to a real-life friendship.
Book Hero Magic summarised reviews for this book. While it's new and still learning, it may not be perfect - your feedback is welcome! HOW HAS THIS BEEN REVIEWED?
Wittgenstein's Nephew by Thomas Bernhard is celebrated for its intense exploration of friendship and the intricacies of mental illness. Many reviews commend Bernhard's incisive wit and his poignant critique of society, weaving a narrative that is both bleak and deeply human. The book elicits praise for its stylistic elegance and the powerful reflections on life and intellectual legacy.
Book Details
INFORMATION
ISBN: 9780571349982
Publisher: Faber & Faber
Format: Paperback / softback
Date Published: 19 September 2019
Country: United Kingdom
Imprint: Faber & Faber
Edition: Main
Contributors:
- Translated by David McLintock
- Translated by David McLintock
Audience: General / adult
DIMENSIONS
Spine width: 7.0mm
Width: 130.0mm
Height: 200.0mm
Weight: 95g
Pages: 112
Collections
About the Author
Thomas Bernhard was born in the Netherlands to Austrian parents in 1931. He was raised in Austria and studied dramatic arts at Mozarteum University in Salzburg. His writing first appeared in newspapers in the early 1950s, and he published his first book, a poetry collection, in 1957. His first novel, Frost, was published in 1963, and his first full-length play, A Party for Boris, premiered in 1970. In total he published nine novels, five autobiographical stories, around ten short story collections, eighteen plays and five volumes of poetry. His works were awarded numerous German and European literary prizes. He died in Austria in 1989. Bernhard is one of the most widely translated and admired European writers, famed for his torrential prose and bleak comedy. Faber & Faber will be reissuing five of his novels in 2019 to mark the thirtieth anniversary of his death.
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Correction
Thomas Bernhard is one of the masters of contemporary European fiction. After Kafka's and Canetti's, his sensibility is one of the most acute, the most capable of exemplary images and gestures, in modern literature." — George Steiner, Times Literary Supplement Roithamer, a character based on Wittgenstein, has committed suicide having been driven to madness by his own frightening powers of...Paperback$2999Unit price /UnavailableIn StockShips today -
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