Goethe Dies

This collection of four stories is, as long-time fans of Thomas Bernhard would expect, bleakly comic and inspiringly rancorous. The subject of his stories vary: in one, Goethe summons Wittgenstein to discuss the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus; 'Montaigne: A Story in Twenty-Two Instalments' tells of a young man sealing himself in a tower to read; 'Reunion', meanwhile, satirises that very impulse to escape; and the final story rounds out the collection by making Bernhard himself a victim, persecuted by his greatest enemy his very homeland of Austria. Underpinning all these variously comic, tragic and bitingly satirical excursions is Bernhard's abiding interest in, and deep knowledge of, the philosophy of doubt.