Extinction
Book description
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…
Why read it?
1 author picked Extinction as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?
I discovered Bernhard—miraculously—in a provincial train station in southern Italy, where the bar had a selection of books on sale.
This was when Bernhard translations into English were hard to find, so my early experience of the writer, in my opinion one of the most extraordinary of his generation, was in Italian. His final novel, Extinction, is set in Rome and it’s a classic of Bernhardian nihilism, scratching at the itch of the absurdity that is life in the face of death.
Bernhard’s Rome is the yin of intellectual freedom to the suffocating and hypocritical yang of Austria. In…
From Charles' list on set in 20th century Rome.
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