Old Masters A Comedy Thomas Bernhard Ewald Osars by Thomas Bernhard, Ewald Osars 9780241459423, 0241459427 instant download after payment.

Old Masters (subtitled A Comedy) is a novel by the Austrian writer Thomas Bernhard, which was first published in 1985. It is a devilishly funny story about the friendship between two old men - Reger, a musical philosopher, and his acquaintance Atzbacher, a private academic.

For over thirty years Reger, a music critic, has sat on the same bench in front of a Tintoretto painting in a Viennese museum, thinking and railing against contemporary society, his fellow men, artists, the weather, even the state of public lavatories. His friend Atzbacher has been summoned to meet him, and through his eyes we learn more about Reger - the tragic death of his wife, his thoughts of suicide and, eventually, the true purpose of their appointment. At once pessimistic and exuberant, rancorous and hilarious, Old Masters is a richly satirical portrait of culture, genius, nationhood, class, the value of art and the pretensions of humanity.

"Bernhard is one of the masters of contemporary European fiction."  -  George Steiner

Thomas Bernhard was born in Holland in 1931 but grew up in Austria. His interest in music and theatre led him to study at the Akademie Mozarteum in Salzburg. He has written a quantity of poetry, several novels, short stories and plays and three volumes of autobiography. He died in 1989.