The back jackets of much of Thomas Bernhard's English-language translations are burdened by such qualifications as "near genius" or "second only to Kafka and Beckett."  This, of course, is no small praise: there is no shame in being second to Kafka or Beckett; there is no shame in being a "ne

Joseph Conrad's life is marked by the kind of outsize exploits that would be subject to skepticism were they claimed by anyone other than Joseph Conrad; so, too, does it only seem an ability unique to Conrad that the outré travails of his world's pedestrianly extravagant inhabitants appear