Extinction

Thomas Bernhard (1931-1989) has been hailed by Gabriel Josipovici as 'Austria's finest postwar writer' and by George Steiner as 'one of the masters of contemporary European fiction'. Faber Finds is proud to reissue a selection of four of Bernhard's finest novels. "Extinction", Bernhard's last published novel, is the story of Franz-Josef Murau - intellectual black sheep of a powerful Austrian land-owning family - who 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.