My Prizes

Completed in 1980 but published here for the first time, My Prizes is an accounting - prize by prize, blow by blow - of the background and circumstances of reception of nine literary prizes that Thomas Bernhard was awarded between 1963 and 1980, followed by some of the speeches he delivered on those occasions - each of which was also the occasion for scandal or worse. The result is a portrait of the artist as prizewinner and prize farceur: sardonic, laconic, biting-the-hand, relishing both the world and himself with bitter amusement. 'Thank goodness for Thomas Bernhard, the most truthful, the funniest and the most musical of writers since Marcel Proust.