Woodcutters

Thomas Bernhard, one of the most distinct, celebrated, and perverse of 20th century writers, took his own life in 1989. Perhaps the greatest Austrian writer of the 20th century, Bernhard's vision in novels like Cutting Timber was relentlessly bleak and comically nihilistic. His prose is torrential and his stlye unmistakable. Bernhard is the missing link between Kafka, Beckett, Michel Houellebecq and Lars von Trier; without Bernhard the literature of alienation and self-contempt would be bereft of its great practitioner. Cutting Timber:An Irritation is widely recognised as his masterpiece. Over the course of a few hours, following a performance of Ibsen's The Wild Duck, we are in the company of the Auersbergers, and our narrator, who never once leaves the relative comfort of his 'wing-backed chair' where he sips at a glass of champagne. As they anticpate the arrival of the star actor, and the commencement of dinner, the narrator of Cutting Timber dismantles the hollow pretentiousness at the heart of the Austrian bourgeoisie. The effect is devastating; the horror only redeemed by the humour.

Thomas Bernhard was born in the Netherlands to Austrian parents in 1931. He was raised in Austria and studied dramatic arts at Mozarteum University in Salzburg. His writing first appeared in newspapers in the early 1950s, and he published his first book, a poetry collection, in 1957. His first novel, Frost, was published in 1963, and his first full-length play, A Party for Boris, premiered in 1970. In total he published nine novels, five autobiographical stories, around ten short story collections, eighteen plays and five volumes of poetry. His works were awarded numerous German and European literary prizes. He died in Austria in 1989. Bernhard is one of the most widely translated and admired European writers, famed for his torrential prose and bleak comedy. Faber & Faber will be reissuing five of his novels in 2019 to mark the thirtieth anniversary of his death.