Concrete

Instead of the book he's meant to write, Rudolph, a Viennese musicologist, produces this tale of procrastination, failure, and despair, a dark and grotesquely funny story of small woes writ large and profound horrors detailed and rehearsed to the point of distraction.<br/><br/>"Certain booksâ fewâ assert literary importance instantly, profoundly. This new novel by the internationally praised but not widely known Austrian writer is one of thoseâ a book of mysterious dark beauty . . . . [It] is overwhelming; one wants to read it again, immediately, to re-experience its intricate innovations, not to let go of this masterful work."â John Rechy, Los Angeles Times<br/><br/>"Rudolph is not obstructed by some malfunctions in part of his beingâ his being itself is a knot. And as Bernhard's narrative proceeds, we begin to register the dimensions of his crisis, its self-consuming circularity . . . . Where rage of this intensity is directed outward, we often find the sociopath; where inward, the suicide. Where it breaks out laterally, onto the page, we sometimes find a most unsettling artistic vision."â Sven Birkerts, The New Republic