Thomas Bernhard
Austrian playwright and novelist whose work attacked his country's Nazi past and cultural complacency with hysterical, repetitive, claustrophobic prose. Heldenplatz caused a national scandal in Austria. His will famously forbade any performance of his work in Austria after his death—a prohibition that was eventually lifted.
Works
- CorrectionPhilosophical meditation on obsession and failure through a mathematician's monologue
- The LoserThree friends' lives intersect through piano competition and artistic compromise
- WoodcuttersScathing satirical novel set at an Austrian cultural gathering of hypocrisy
- FrostBleak novella of two men confronting decay, mortality, and intellectual emptiness
- Old MastersMeditation on aging artists and the decay of cultural institutions in Vienna
- HeldenplatzPlay depicting Austria's Nazi past and postwar denial through political spectacle
- The Ignoramus and the Madman
- Eve of Retirement
- The President
- Ritter, Dene, Voss