In the posthumously-published anthology Meine Preise, Thomas Bernhard indulges in a sweeping verbal attack on the literary world and its conventions. He describes, in detail, the traumatic events that he must have been experiencing when he was awarded various prizes for literature: the Bremen Literature Prize, the Austrian State Prize for Literature, the Grillparzer Prize and the Georg Buchner Prize. These all triggered what was, for him, a characteristic tirade against everything and everyone. And it is exactly this that prevents any reading of Meine Preise as purely autobiographical. It is a piece of prose that, though sounding oppositional, becomes, through its exaggeration, something more than negation. The actors Yohanna Schwertfeger and Lisa Hofer will read from Meine Preise.
Lisa Hofer (*1984) is an actress. She lives and works in Munich and Vienna.
Yohanna Schwertfeger (*1982) has been an actress at the Burgtheater Wien since 2009. She lives and works in Vienna.