Adam Kirsch

Thomas Bernhard was born in 1931, in Holland, went to live near Saltzberg with his grandparents, and by the time he died in 1989 he had become in many people’s opinion, Austria’s most important post-war writer. His themes were the suffocation of family life, the corruption of Austria’s cultural institutions and the genius of the artist. His talents won him many literary prizes and awards and invitations to join academies but there was never a less likely joiner of things than Thomas Bernhard. His novel and memoires and even the essays in My Prizes are in his unmistakable voice — ranting, anxious paranoid and funny in a tragic way.

Poet and critics Adam Kirsch was a staff writer at the New Republic magazine, and wrote about Bernhard and My Prizes, and joined me on The Book Show.