Concrete

Description

'Probably nothing exists that would prepare one for Bernhard's machined vehemence, though once you've read one, you perhaps start to crave the bitter taste and the savage not-quite-humour ... Genius.' - Michael Hofmann Instead of the book he is meant to write, Rudolph, a Viennese musicologist, produces this dark and grotesquely funny account of small woes writ large, of profound horrors detailed and rehearsed to the point of distraction. We learn of Rudolph's sister, whose help he invites then reviles; his 'really marvellous' house which he hates; the suspicious illness he carefully nurses; his ten-year-long attempt to write the perfect opening sentence; and his escape to the island of Majorca, which turns out to be the site of someone else's very real horror story, and ultimately brings him no release from himself. Concrete is Thomas Bernhard at his very finest: a bleakly hilarious insight into procrastination and failure that scratches the murky depths of our souls.

Thomas Bernhard was born in Holland in 1931 and grew up in Austria. He studied music at the Akademie Mozarteum in Salzburg, but was plagued by ill-health, and in 1957 began a second career as a playwright, poet, and novelist. The winner of the three most distinguished and coveted literary prizes awarded in Germany, Bernhard became one of the most widely translated and admired European writers of his generation, famed for his torrential prose and bleak comedy. He published nine novels, an autobiography, one volume of poetry, four collections of short stories, and six volumes of plays. Thomas Bernhard died in Austria in 1989. Faber & Faber are reissuing five of Bernhard's novels in 2019 to coincide with the 30th anniversary of his death.