Walking: A Novella

A walk with a friend unspools a far-ranging, darkly comic, philosophical dialogue in this novella by “one of the masters of contemporary European fiction” (George Steiner). With celebrated novels such as The Loser, Woodcutters, and Extinction, Austrian author Thomas Bernhard cemented his reputation as “one of the century’s most gifted writers.” Though he is favorably compared with Franz Kafka and Samuel Beckett, it is only in recent years that he has gained a devoted cult following in America (Newsday). A powerful, compact novella, Walking provides a perfect introduction to the absurd, dark, and uncommonly comic world of Thomas Bernhard, showing a preoccupation with themes—illness and madness, isolation, tragic friendships—that would obsess Bernhard throughout his career. Walking records the conversations of the unnamed narrator and his friend Oehler while they walk, discussing anything that comes to mind but always circling back to their mutual friend Karrer, who has gone irrevocably mad. Walking is a beautifully realized, penetrating meditation on the impossibility of truly thinking.