 Trade In this Item for up to £0.90
Trade in Extinction (Vintage International) for an Amazon.co.uk gift card of up to £0.90, which you can then spend on millions of items across the site. Plus, get an extra £5 when you trade in books worth £10 or more until June 30, 2012. Trade-in values may vary (terms apply). Find more products eligible for trade-in.
|
Frequently Bought Together
Product details
|
More About the Author
Product Description
Product 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 sister’s wedding on the family estate of Wolfsegg, having resolved never to go home again, Murau receives a telegram informing him of the death of his parents and brother in a car crash. Not only must he now go back, he must do so as the master of Wolfsegg. And he must decide its fate. Written in the seamless, mesmerizing style for which Bernhard was
famous, Extinction is the ultimate proof of his extraordinary literary genius.
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 sister’s wedding on the family estate of Wolfsegg, having resolved never to go home again, Murau receives a telegram informing him of the death of his parents and brother in a car crash. Not only must he now go back, he must do so as the master of Wolfsegg. And he must decide its fate. Written in the seamless, mesmerizing style for which Bernhard was
famous, Extinction is the ultimate proof of his extraordinary literary genius.
About the Author
Thomas Bernhard (1931-1989) won many of the most prestigious literary prizes in Europe, including the Austrian State Prize, the Breman and Bruchner Prizes and Le Pix Seguier. Among his novels are The Loser, Concrete, and Extinction, all of which are available in Faber Finds.
--This text refers to an alternate
Paperback
edition.
Inside This Book
(Learn More)
Suggested Tags from Similar Products(What's this?)Be the first one to add a relevant tag (keyword that's strongly related to this product)
|
Sell a Digital Version of This Book in the Kindle Store
If you are a publisher or author and hold the digital rights to a book, you can sell a digital version of it in our Kindle Store.
Learn more
What Other Items Do Customers Buy After Viewing This Item?
Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
9 of 9 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
`Extinction' is a lucid deconstruction of the façade of family life. Franz-Josef is an academic working in Rome when he receives a telegram informing him that his parents and brother have been killed in an accident, and that he must return to his familial home of Wolfsegg in Austria. The first half of the book focuses on Franz-Josef's feelings towards his family and upbringing, as told to Gambetti, his student in Rome. The second half covers his interaction with his sisters and family after returning to Wolfsegg to attend the funerals and take charge of the estate that has now passed to him. `Extinction' is an inner monologue describing Franz-Josef's antipathy toward his home, his family and Austria as a whole.
`Extinction' is a brutal piece of writing. Franz-Josef is a left-leaning intellectual, but his family, and his country, are portrayed as bourgeois and Nazi. Their priorities are a million miles from his, and he casts himself in the role of black sheep, aided and abetted by his Uncle Georg, his corrupting influence and fellow family `embarrassment'. Franz-Josef holds nothing back, telling Gambetti of his utter disgust for Austria and its way of life, and for his sisters, pursuing small-minded goals in short, ugly lives, and for his dead parents and brother. In Rome he is in his element. Back in Wolfsegg, he is the outsider, forced to play host to unrepentant Nazis and self-important middle classes in pointless jobs. He reluctantly performs his part, but the sights and places of his youth fuel his feeling of being an outsider. His goal for his time in Wolfsegg becomes the extinction of his past and his connection to it.
`Extinction' is obviously not a happy read, or a particularly easy one. All the negatives of Franz-Josef's life are poured out, and the vitriol is ceaseless. Nevertheless, it is brilliantly lucid, and anyone sharing some of his attitude towards past and family cannot help but recognise the truth behind his feelings. Many writers have written about family issues, but few that I have read have explored what it means to genuinely hate their relatives. Bernhard does this successfully, maintaining the reader's sympathy, but also exploring Franz-Josef's failings. It is written as large unbroken chunks of text, so does require some patience and perseverance to get through, but was fantastically rewarding for me to have read. Perhaps this isn't a book for everyone, but as an exploration of a politically and intellectually riven family, I haven't come across anything better.
`Extinction' is a brutal piece of writing. Franz-Josef is a left-leaning intellectual, but his family, and his country, are portrayed as bourgeois and Nazi. Their priorities are a million miles from his, and he casts himself in the role of black sheep, aided and abetted by his Uncle Georg, his corrupting influence and fellow family `embarrassment'. Franz-Josef holds nothing back, telling Gambetti of his utter disgust for Austria and its way of life, and for his sisters, pursuing small-minded goals in short, ugly lives, and for his dead parents and brother. In Rome he is in his element. Back in Wolfsegg, he is the outsider, forced to play host to unrepentant Nazis and self-important middle classes in pointless jobs. He reluctantly performs his part, but the sights and places of his youth fuel his feeling of being an outsider. His goal for his time in Wolfsegg becomes the extinction of his past and his connection to it.
`Extinction' is obviously not a happy read, or a particularly easy one. All the negatives of Franz-Josef's life are poured out, and the vitriol is ceaseless. Nevertheless, it is brilliantly lucid, and anyone sharing some of his attitude towards past and family cannot help but recognise the truth behind his feelings. Many writers have written about family issues, but few that I have read have explored what it means to genuinely hate their relatives. Bernhard does this successfully, maintaining the reader's sympathy, but also exploring Franz-Josef's failings. It is written as large unbroken chunks of text, so does require some patience and perseverance to get through, but was fantastically rewarding for me to have read. Perhaps this isn't a book for everyone, but as an exploration of a politically and intellectually riven family, I haven't come across anything better.
7 of 7 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
If you really want to understand how your own mind works....the mechanics of thinking and reflection...consider the voice of Bernhard. This is the end piece in one of the most ambitious and interesting literary projects of the 20th century and hardly anyone knows about it...Bernhard stands in the first rank of cut-throat modernists and it will only be a matter of time before the true nature of his vision is finally appreciated.
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
This strange book turned out to be a funny and biting novel. But don't expect a plot as such or much in the way of witty dialogue. Like most of Bernhard's books this is a monologue, with no paragraph breaks or speech marks. Almost all of the action takes place inside the narrator's head as he wrestles with the dilemma of whether to return to Austria to claim his family estate. He loathes his native country, but cannot escape it. Not easy to read, but a wonderful tone of hatred and black humour makes it very worthwhile persevering.
Would you like to see more reviews about this item?
Were these reviews helpful?
Let us know
Most Recent Customer Reviews
raw truth
Thomas Berhard is my favourite writer. I have discovered him late in life. We both lived in Salzburg in the same time and frequented the same café. Read more
Published 29 days ago by ipek
Meticulously constructed, ruthless
Most of the narrator's family have been wiped out before the end of the first page. But despite this, Extinction soon establishes a deceptively light manner, with a pleasant... Read more
Published on 30 Nov 2000
The alphabet's contribution to the kangaroo's extinction
May I draw amazon's attention to the subtle difference, consisting of at least two strategically placed letters, between Australia and Austria, whence Mr Bernhard, now dead, came.
Published on 22 Sep 1999 by andreas.wesemann@ssmb.com
Bernhard's Extinction
In Extinction Bernhard creates his most indulgent, and most inscrutable work since On the Mountain - the likes of which only he can muscle into great literature. Read more
Published on 9 Dec 1998
Bernhard and the Mind Map
The much imitated Thomas Bernhard, makes with this book his greatest contribution to European letters, and writing with a persistent style, that is not matched or bettered... Read more
Published on 4 Nov 1998
Customer Discussions
|
This product's forum
Active discussions in related forums
Search Customer Discussions
|
Related forums
|
Listmania!
Look for similar items by category
Look for similar items by subject
Feedback
- Would you like to update product info or give feedback on images?
- I am the Author, and I want to comment on my book.
- I am the Publisher, and I want to comment on this book.
|
