LRB BOOKSHOP''S AUTHOR OF THE MONTH
ONE OF THE GUARDIAN''S BEST BOOKS OF 2019
''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 Knausgaard
Mid-century Austria. Three aspiring concert pianists - Wertheimer, Glenn Gould, and the narrator - have dedicated their lives to achieving the status of a virtuoso. But one day, two of them overhear Gould playing Bach''s Goldberg Variations, and his incomparable genius instantly destroys them both.
They are forced to abandon their musical ambitions: Wertheimer, over a tortured process of disintegration that sees him becoming obsessed with both writing and his own sister, with whom he has a quasi-incestuous relationship culminating in death; and the narrator, instantly, retrea
