{"product_id":"loser","title":"Loser","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003eLRB BOOKSHOP''S AUTHOR OF THE MONTH \u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eONE OF THE GUARDIAN''S BEST BOOKS OF 2019\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003e''If you haven’t read Bernhard, you will not know of the most radical advance in fiction since Joyce ... My advice: dive in.'' Lucy Ellmann\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003e''I absolutely love Bernhard: he is one of the darkest and funniest writers ... A must read for everybody.'' Karl Ove Knausgaard\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eMid-century Austria. Three aspiring concert pianists - Wertheimer, Glenn Gould, and the narrator - have dedicated their lives to achieving the status of a virtuoso. But one day, two of them overhear Gould playing Bach''s \u003ci\u003eGoldberg Variations,\u003c\/i\u003e and his incomparable genius instantly destroys them both. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThey are forced to abandon their musical ambitions: Wertheimer, over a tortured process of disintegration that sees him becoming obsessed with both writing and his own sister, with whom he has a quasi-incestuous relationship culminating in death; and the narrator, instantly, retreating into obscurity to write a book that he periodically destroys and restarts. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWritten as a monologue in one remarkable unbroken paragraph, Thomas Bernhard''s dazzling meditation on failure, genius, and fame is a radical new reading experience: musical, paralysing, raging, and inimitable.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"MediaPlace","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":57315853468030,"sku":"NW9780571349975","price":10.22,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0817\/1379\/1261\/files\/9780571349975.jpg?v=1778247527","url":"https:\/\/mediaplace.com\/products\/loser","provider":"MediaPlace","version":"1.0","type":"link"}