The Story Archive

The Lime Works

Thomas Bernhard · 1970 CE · Novel · German · Contemporary

Konrad buys a disused lime works in a Styrian gorge, boards up the windows and moves in with his crippled wife so that he can at last set down the study of hearing he has carried complete in his head for twenty years. He drills her for hours a day with the Urbanchich audiometric method, quarrels with the village and writes nothing. The whole account reaches the reader third-hand, assembled from what insurance men picked up in two inns.

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Attributes

Genre
PsychologicalMystery
Theme
ObsessionIsolation & AlienationArt & CreationMadness
Archetype (Jung / Campbell)
CreatorShadowAnti-Hero
Plot structure
Unreliable NarratorFrame NarrativeCircular
Symbol / motif
The PrisonThe HouseThe Book / Manuscript
Conflict
vs Selfvs Person
Mode / tone
ModernistIronicTragic
Culture / tradition
German

Closest analogues