Extinction

LRB BOOKSHOP'S AUTHOR OF THE MONTH ONE OF THE GUARDIAN'S BEST BOOKS OF 2019WITH A NEW AFTERWORD BY GEOFF DYER'If you haven't read Bernhard, you will not know of the most radical advance in fiction since Joyce ...

My advice: dive in.' Lucy Ellmann'I absolutely love Bernhard: he is one of the darkest and funniest writers ...

A must read for everybody.' Karl Ove KnausgaardFranz-Josef Murau is the intellectual black sheep of a powerful Austrian land-owning family.

He now 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. The summit of Thomas Bernhard's artistic genius - mesmerising, addictive, explosively tragicomic - Extinction is a landmark of post-war literature, newly illuminated by Geoff Dyer's afterword.