'Probably nothing exists that would prepare one for Bernhard's machined vehemence, though once you've read one, you perhaps start to crave the bitter taste and the savage not-quite-humour ... Genius.' - Michael Hofmann

Instead of the book he is meant to write, Rudolph, a Viennese musicologist, produces this dark and grotesquely funny account of small woes writ large, of profound horrors detailed and rehearsed to the point of distraction. We learn of Rudolph's sister, whose help he invites then reviles; his 'really marvellous' house which he hates; the suspicious illness he carefully nurses; his ten-year-long attempt to write the perfect opening sentence; and his escape to the island of Majorca, which turns out to be the site of someone else's very real horror story, and ultimately brings him no release from himself.

Concrete is Thomas Bernhard at his very finest: a bleakly hilarious insight into procrastination and failure that scratches the murky depths of our souls.

Reissued with stunning artwork by Leanne Shapton and a new afterword by Ben Lerner, Wittgenstein's Nephew is a memento mori of restless genius.

It is 1967. Two men lie bedridden in separate wings of a Viennese hospital. The narrator, Thomas Bernhard, is stricken with a lung ailment; his friend Paul, nephew of Ludwig Wittgenstein, is suffering from one of his periodic bouts of madness. As their friendship quickens, these two eccentric men discover in each other an antidote to their feelings of despair on the unexpected strength of what they share - a spiritual symmetry forged by their love of music, black humour, disgust for bourgeois Vienna, and fear of mortality.

A restless blend of fiction and memoir, Wittgenstein's Nephew is not only a haunting meditation on the artist's struggle to maintain a foothold on reality, but an impassioned eulogy to a real-life friendship.

'Extinction features, without doubt, the funniest passage in the whole of literature. The dreadful becomes hilarious, joyful - and it makes one thirst for more of the similar.' - Geoff Dyer

Franz-Josef Murau is the intellectual black sheep of a powerful Austrian land-owning family. He now lives in Rome in self-imposed exile, surrounded by a coterie of artistic and intellectual friends. On returning from his sister's wedding on the family estate of Wolfsegg, having resolved never to go home again, Murau receives a telegram informing him of the death of his parents and brother in a car crash. Not only must he now go back, he must do so as the master of Wolfsegg: and he must decide its fate.

The summit of Thomas Bernhard's artistic genius - mesmerising, addictive, explosively tragicomic - Extinction is a landmark of post-war literature.

Freud was fascinated by the mysteries of creativity and the imagination. The groundbreaking works that comprise The Uncanny present some of his most influential explorations of the mind. In these pieces Freud investigates the vivid but seemingly trivial childhood memories that often "screen" deeply uncomfortable desires; the links between literature and daydreaming; and our intensely mixed feelings about things we experience as "uncanny." Also included is Freud's celebrated study of Leonardo Da Vinci—his first exercise in psychobiography.

In his final years, Freud devoted most of his energies to a series of highly ambitious works on the broadest issues of religion and society.

As early as 1908, he produced a powerful paper on the repressive hypocrisy of 'civilized sexual morality', and its role in causing 'modern nervous illness'. Deepening this analysis in Civilisation and its Discontents, he argues that 'civilized' values - and the impossible ideals of Christianity - inevitably distort our natural aggression and impose a terrible burden of guilt. It is also here that Freud developed his last great theoretical innovation: the strange and haunting notion of our innate death drive, locked in a constant struggle with the forces of Eros.

Screen Memories/Leonardo da Vinci and a Memory of his Childhood/Family Romances/Creative Writers and Daydreaming/The Uncanny

Freud was fascinated by the mysteries of creativity and the imagination. The major pieces collected here explore the vivid but seemingly trivial childhood memories that often ‘screen’ far more uncomfortable desires; the links between literature and daydreaming – and our intensely mixed feelings about things we experience as ‘uncanny’.

His insights into the roots of artistic expression in the triangular ‘family romances’ (of father, mother and infant) that so dominate our early lives, and the parallels between our own memories and desires and the tormented career of a genius like Leonardo, reveal the artistry of Freud’s own writing. And his celebrated study of Leonardo, Freud’s first exercise in psycho-biography, brilliantly uses a single memory to reveal the childhood conflicts behind both Leonardo’s remarkable achievements and his striking eccentricity.

General Editor: Adam Phillips

Why the Greeks? How did it happen that these people-out of all Mediterranean societies-developed democratic systems of government? The outstanding German historian of the ancient world, Christian Meier, reconstructs the process of political thinking in Greek culture that led to democracy. He demonstrates that the civic identity of the Athenians was a direct precondition for the practical reality of this form of government. Meier shows how the structure of Greek communal life gave individuals a civic role and discusses a crucial reform that institutionalized the idea of equality before the law. In Greek drama-specifically Aeschylus' Oresteia-he finds reflections of the ascendancy of civil law and of a politicizing of life in the city-state. He examines the role of the leader as well as citizen participation in Athenian democracy and describes an ancient equivalent of the idea of social progress. He also contrasts the fifth-century Greek political world with today's world, drawing revealing comparisons. The Greek Discovery of Politics is important reading for ancient historians, classicists, political scientists, and anyone interested in the history of political thought or in the culture of ancient Greece.