Limited Deluxe Edition
Bound in cloth with handmade Japanese endpapers and title label.
ISBN: 1884381065
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Limited Paperback Edition
Perfect bound in wrappers.
ISBN: 1884381073
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Thomas Bernhard, the most recognized novelist of post-World War II Austria, has been published in translation over the last decade by Knopf and University of Chicago. Born in 1931, he began publishing in 1957 and left behind a vast body of work when he died in 1989-novels, plays, poetry and memoirs-as well as a reputation as a difficult prose stylist and an important social commentator, a "sacred monster" according to one critic. Among his books are Gathering Evidence, Woodcutter, Wittgenstein's Nephew, The Loser and Extinction.

The Voice Impersonator is a quirky book, a collection of 104 very short stories that draw upon Bernhard's experience as a journalist: human experience turned into extreme "human interest" tales wherein characters commit murder and suicide, fall from cliffs and go insane.

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"The voice impersonator who can impersonate everyone's voice but his own is an important parable for our times...I think it's a terrific book."
Marjorie Perloff, author of Wittgenstein's Ladder

"This volume, palatable and brief, should serve as a feasible introduction to the rest of Bernhard's work."
The Boston Review, December 1997/Jan 1998

"This slender book contains 104 little stories by one of the century's greatest writers...the profound crackle of the philosopher who has seen through everything... ."
ArtForum, December 1997, (The Voice Imitator made Gary Indiana's Top Ten List for 1997!)

"Part diatribe, part black comedy and part philosophical investigation, the book strikes all the major themes in Bernhard's novels and plays...His anger against hypocrisy, corruption and, most of all, Austria...penetrates the page like acid applied to a copper plate."
The New York Times Sunday Book Review, December 14, 1997

"Mordantly funny, thanks to the straightforward tone in which they're presented, these uneasy pieces are the perfect distillation of the graveyard wit and unsettling wisdom of one of the great literary pessimists."
Kirkus Reviews, December 15, 1997

"Bernhard was Austria's greatest postwar writer, a consummate stylist, with a mordant, sometimes Edward Goreyish humor-and an all pervasive pessimism about human affairs. Of his contemporaries, only late Beckett is bleaker."
Washington Post, January 18, 1998

"And what a wonderful literary season this is, because it sees the publication of (this) earlier Bernhard text...It has often been said that the problem with short stories is that they are never short enough. Well. Bernhard has removed all of the elaboration to allow these tender morsels of despair and disgust to shine..."
Los Angeles Times Book Review, January 25, 1998

"The shocking gallows humor is reminiscent of the 'News from the Weird' syndicated newspaper column."
Library Journal, September 1, 1997

"It might be said-is this a recommendation? is it a mark of great art?-that prolonged exposure to The Voice Imitator erodes one's sense of reality."
Times Literary Supplement, January 9, 1998

Awards
1998 Association American University Presses, Book Design Show.

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