Book cover for Old Masters: A Comedy by Thomas Bernhard

Old Masters

A Comedy

Thomas Bernhard
1992 Released
160 Pages
2-3 Hours
★ 4.17 1,684 ratings
Ebook Unavailable
Audiobook Unavailable
Hardback Unavailable
University of Chicago PressISBN 9780226043913
Translated by Ewald Osers
In this exuberantly satirical novel, the tutor Atzbacher has been summoned by his friend Reger to meet him in a Viennese museum. While Reger gazes at a Tintoretto portrait, Atzbacher--who fears Reger's plans to kill himself--gives us a portrait of the musicologist: his wisdom, his devotion to his wife, and his love-hate relationship with
art. With characteristically acerbic wit, Bernhard exposes the pretensions and aspirations of humanity in a novel at once pessimistic and strangely exhilarating.

"Bernhard's . . . most enjoyable novel."--Robert Craft, New York Review of Books.

"Bernhard is one of the masters of contemporary European fiction."--George Steiner

Thomas Bernhard

Thomas Bernhard (1931-89) grew up in Salzburg and Vienna, where he studied music. In 1957 he began a second career as a playwright, poet, and novelist. He went on to win many of the most prestigious literary prizes of Europe, including the Austrian State Prize, the Bremen and Büchner prizes, and Le Prix Séguier.

More by Thomas Bernhard

Woodcutters
The Loser
Correction
The Lime Works
Gargoyles
Of Seven Fir Trees and the Snow
Extinction
Frost
Wittgenstein's Nephew
Gathering Evidence
Concrete
Yes

Ewald Osers

Translated by

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