Histrionics: Three Plays - Softcover

Bernhard, Thomas

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0226043959 ISBN 13: 9780226043951

Publisher: University of Chicago Press, 1990

Synopsis

Although he is best known in the United States as a novelist, Austrian writer Thomas Bernhard has been hailed in Europe as one of the most significant and controversial of contemporary playwrights. George Steiner has predicted that the current era in German-language literature will be recognized as the "Bernhard period"; John Updike compares Bernhard with Kafka, Grass, Handke, and Weiss. His dark, absurdist plays can be likened to those of Beckett and Pinter, but their cultural and political concerns are distinctly Bernhard's. While Austria's recent political history lends particular credibility to Bernhard's satire, his criticisms are directed at the modern world generally; his plays grapple with questions of totalitarianism and the subjection of the individual and with notions of reality and appearance.

About this title

From the Back Cover:

Thomas Bernhard does not use punctuation --except on one occasion--and we have, of course, done our translation with this in mind.

About the Author:

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 Brüchner prizes, and Le Prix Séguier), became one of the most widely admired writers of his generation, and insisted at his death that none of his works be published in Austria for seventy years, a provision later repealed by his half-brother.

Translator, scholar, and stage actor Kenneth J. Northcott (1922–2019) was professor emeritus of Germanic Studies at the University of Chicago and the translator of numerous German-language books for the University of Chicago Press. He is especially known for his inspired translations of works by the Austrian writer Thomas Bernhard, all of which remain in print: The Voice Imitator, Walking, Three Novellas, and Histrionics: Three Plays. 

About this edition

• Publisher: University of Chicago Press
• Publication date: 1990
• ISBN 10: 0226043959
• ISBN 13: 9780226043951
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 292