Extinction

Franz-Josef Murau is the intellectual black sheep of a powerful Austrian land-owning family.

He now 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.

The summit of Thomas Bernhard's artistic genius - mesmerising, addictive, explosively tragicomic - Extinction is a landmark of post-war literature, newly illuminated by Geoff Dyer's afterword.