It is 1967. In separate wings of a Viennese hospital two men lie bedridden. The narrator named Thomas Bernhard is stricken with a lung ailment his friend Paul nephew of the celebrated philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein is suffering from one of his periodic bouts of madness. As their oncecasual friendship quickens these two eccentric men begin to discover in each other a possible antidote to their feelings of hopelessness and mortalitya spiritual symmetry forged by their shared passion for music strange sense of humor disgust for bourgeois Vienna and great fear in the face of death. Part memoir part fiction Wittgensteins Nephew is both a meditation on the artists struggle to maintain a solid foothold in a world gone incomprehensibly askew and a stunningif not hauntingeulogy to a reallife friendship. show more