Wittgenstein Fiction: Portrayals of Ludwig Wittgenstein in Contemporary Western Novels

In this new book, Walker Zupp demonstrates the need to reevaluate the connection between Ludwig Wittgenstein’s philosophy and the extraordinary life that he led, and how the best way to do this, ironically, is by examining novels whose central characters were inspired by Ludwig Wittgenstein’s persona. In Wittgenstein Fiction, Zupp offers comprehensive biographical cross-sections of novels by Thomas Bernhard, Bruce Duffy and Lars Iyer in an attempt to define the genre of Wittgenstein Fiction for the very first time. He argues that Wittgenstein Fiction satirizes the empirical world and the contemporary university, and that authors who work in this genre have to re-create themselves, to some extent, in the form of their fictional Wittgenstein characters, so that fictional biographies of Wittgenstein become strange autobiographies of the authors themselves.

Walker Zupp is a Bermudian writer with an MA in Creative Writing from Lancaster University. He went on to study for a PhD in Creative Writing at the University of Exeter. He splits his time between Cornwall, UK and Bermuda.