Gathering Evidence

Written with a dark pain and drama that recalls the novels of Dickens, Gathering Evidence is a powerful and compelling memoir of youth by one of the twentieth century’s most gifted writers. Born in 1931, the illegitimate child of an abandoned mother, Thomas Bernhard was brought up by an eccentric grandmother and an adored grandfather. Tormented as a young student in rightwing, Catholic Austria, Bernhard ran away from home aged fifteen. At eighteen, he contracted pneumonia. Placed in a hospital ward for the old and terminally ill, he observed with unflinching acuity protracted suffering and death. From the age of 21, everything he wrote was shaped by the urgency of a dying man’s testament – his witness, the quintessence of his life and knowledge – and where this account of his life ends, his art begins.

Author Biography

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 wrote a quantity of poetry, several novels, short stories and plays and three volumes of autobiography. He died in 1989.