LRB BOOKSHOP'S AUTHOR OF THE MONTH
ONE OF THE GUARDIAN'S BEST BOOKS OF 2019
WITH A NEW AFTERWORD BY MICHAEL HOFMANN
'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
'I absolutely love Bernhard: he is one of the darkest and funniest writers ... A must read for everybody.' Karl Ove Knausgaard
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.
'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).
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.
David Robert McLintock (17 November 1930 - 16 October 2003) was a British scholar and translator of German literature. He was born in Barnsley, Yorkshire. He won a scholarship to study at Queen's College, Oxford, where he gained a First in French and German. He taught at Oxford University and then at Royal Holloway College. Starting afresh as a freelance translator, he eventually gained considerable success in literary translation, winning the Schlegel-Tieck Prize twice. He is credited with introducing the works of Thomas Bernhard to English readers. His translations of Bernhard include Concrete, Woodcutters, Wittgenstein's Nephew, Extinction and the multi-volume autobiography Gathering Evidence.
