Extinction (Magill’s Literary Annual 1991-2005)
At a glance:
- Author: Thomas Bernhard
- First Published: 1986
- Type of Work: Novel
- Time of Work: The early 1980’s
- Setting: Piazza Minerva in Rome, Italy, and Wolfsegg, an estate in Austria
- Principal Characters: Franz-Josef Murau, His parents, Johannes Murau, Caecilia and Amalia Murau, Alexander, Georg, Gambetti, Spadolini, Maria, Eisenberg
- Genres: Long fiction
- Subjects: Family or family life, Mothers, Parents and children, Death or dying, Nazism or Nazis, Austria or Austrians, Mind and body
- Locales: Rome, Italy, Austria
Thomas Bernhard defies readers to like this book. For more than three hundred pages without a single indention, much less dialogue, Franz-Josef Murau disappears into the black hole of a cursed soul. Cast in the form of interior monologue, the novel consists of an extended attack on Murau’s family and Austrian homeland written in a rambling, discursive style that manages to be simultaneously vitriolic, claustrophobic, and hypnotic. The ordinary bookstore customer will barely open Extinction before reshelving it with a shudder, and Bernhard would surely wish him good...
[The entire page is 2395 words long]
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