The Loser

Author(s): Thomas Bernhard

Fiction

'When indefatigable obsession looms large as it does in Thomas Bernhard (and his revered precursor Kafka) the result for the reader is a strange exhilaration and the thrall at being admitted into the mind of a maddened, magical genius.' - Edna O'Brien


Mid-century Austria. Three aspiring concert pianists - Wertheimer, Glenn Gould, and the narrator - have dedicated their lives to achieving the status of a virtuoso. But one day, two of them overhear Gould playing Bach's Goldberg Variations, and his incomparable genius instantly destroys them both.


They are forced to abandon their musical ambitions: Wertheimer, over a tortured process of disintegration that sees him becoming obsessed with both writing and his own sister, with whom he has a quasi-incestuous relationship culminating in death; and the narrator, instantly, retreating into obscurity to write a book that he periodically destroys and restarts.


Written as a monologue in one remarkable unbroken paragraph, Bernhard's dazzling meditation on failure, genius, and fame is a radical new reading experience: musical, paralysing, raging, and inimitable.


Product Information

General Fields

  • : 9780571349975
  • : Faber & Faber, Limited
  • : Faber & Faber, Limited
  • : 157.0
  • : July 2019
  • : ---length:- '7.795'width:- '5.079'units:- Inches
  • : books

Special Fields

  • : Thomas Bernhard
  • : Paperback
  • : 1910
  • : 833/.914
  • : 192
  • : FA