Correction (novel)
Correction is a novel by Thomas Bernhard, originally published in German in 1975, and first published in English translation in 1979 by Alfred A. Knopf. Correction’s setting is a garret in the middle of an Austrian forest, described by the narrator as the "thought dungeon" in which the main character, Roithamer, will pursue his project of constructing an extraordinary habitation, the Cone, as a present for his beloved sister. Roithamer is deeply attached to his sister; this does not, however, prevent his provoking her death, which occurs on the very day that she moves into this conic house that he has built for her with formidable effort, in the Kobernausser forest. Roithamer has unwittingly killed his sister by forcing her to inhabit a house that was completely contrary to her own nature. Plot summary The Austrian main character Roithamer, lecturer at Cambridge, after years of paroxysmal projects, builds for his sister, the only person he ever loved, a house in the shape of a cone, right in the geometrically precise middle of the Kobernausser forest. Her answer to the present is death, her traumatic death on entering the Cone. The symbolism of the cone is ambiguous, as it could represent