"Furious, obsessive, scathing, absolutely hilarious and oddly beautiful."
–Claire Messud, author of
The Emperor's Children, on
Salon "Bernhard's fiction is full of energy; his restless imagination cannot leave a fact or idea alone. . . . Only someone with such a brilliant, tricky, inexhaustible mind could get away with
Wittgenstein's Nephew."
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The New York Times "In its obsessive, elegant rhythms and narrative eloquence, [
Wittgenstein's Nephew] resembles a tragic aria by Richard Strauss. . . . A memento mori that approaches genius."
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Wall Street Journal "Oddly moving and funny. . . . A meditative fugue for mad, brilliant voices on the themes of death, death-in-life and the artist's and thinker's role in society."
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Chicago Tribune "Bernhard is a writer of great originality and fascination."
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The New York Review of Books "In the annals of literature, Thomas Bernhard will stand as Austria's postwar genius."
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The Washington Times "Thomas Bernhard is one of the masters of contemporary European fiction. . . . After Kafka and Canetti's, his sensibility is one of the most acute, the most capable of exemplary images and gestures, in modern literature."
–George Steiner
"It is high time that we keep Bernhard firmly in our mind, as European readers have been doing for many years now."
–
Christian Science Monitor