The
writing of Peter Handke, all eight of his novels, is a journey akin to having
great seats at a soccer match that never ends.
Or, being lost in another man’s personal and political woods on a
winter’s eve. One hopes to escape the
bleakness of Handke’s bog lands by hurrying to finish the book before hands
rise from the pages and strangle the reader.
That’s why there are so few readers of Peter Handke. But, if you wish to delve into the world of
Yugoslav Wars [1991-2001]from a right-wing ethnic cleansing point of view then, by all means, he’s a champion.
Handke
was born in 1942 in Austria and lives in France.
He
was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2019.
Novels
by Peter Handke, Austrian Writer.
--Crossing
the Sierra de Gredos, a 2002 novel by the Austrian writer Peter Handke.
It tells the story of a successful female banker who makes a journey through
the Sierra de Gredos mountain range in Spain to meet a famous author in La
Mancha who will write her biography. On the way she makes stops where she is
confronted with the unheroic and commercialised world she wishes to escape.
--The
Goalie's Anxiety at the Penalty Kick is a 1970 short novel by the
Austrian Nobel prize-winning writer Peter Handke. It was adapted into 1972 a film with the same title, directed by Wim Wenders.[1]
A
goalkeeper is sent off during a game for dissent. He spends the night with a
cinema cashier, whom he afterward kills. Although a type of detective film, it
is more slow-moving and contemplative than other films of the genre.
It
explores the monotony of the murderer's existence and, like many of Wenders'
films, the overwhelming cultural influence of America in post-war West Germany.
Late in the movie, the goalkeeper and a traveling salesman attend a football
game and witness a penalty kick. The goalkeeper describes what it is like to
face a penalty: should he dive to one side, and if he does will the kicker aim
for the other? It is a psychological confrontation in which each tries to
outfox the other. In parallel with this, the goalkeeper, rather than go on the
run, has returned to his home town and is living in plain sight. He doesn't
know if the police are looking for him in particular, and the police are not
necessarily looking for someone who isn't trying to hide.
--A
Moment of True Feeling. Gregor
Keuschnig works for the Embassy of Austria in Paris. One day he wakes up from a
dream where he murdered a woman. From this moment his life seems pointless and
the world around him distant. He goes through his daily routine and interacts
with his colleagues, his mistress, and his family, but feels lost and out of
balance. He observes everything around him in search of a sensation that feels
genuine.
--The Moravian Night is a 2008 novel by the Austrian writer Peter Handke. It
tells the story of a retired writer who talks about a recent journey and the
state of Europe in front of a small crowd on his houseboat, while anchored
outside the village Porodin on the river Morava in Serbia.
--My
Year in the No-Man's-Bay (German: Mein Jahr in der Niemandsbucht) is a
1994 novel by the Austrian writer Peter Handke. It follows a writer's attempt
to describe a metamorphosis he went through two decades earlier when he
stopped being confrontative and instead became a passive observer. The task
proves to be difficult and most of the book is instead concerned with the lives
of the narrator, his family and the people in the Paris suburb where he lives.
The book is 1066 pages long in its original German. It was published in English
in 1998, translated by Krishna Winston.
--Repetition
is a 1986 novel by the Austrian writer Peter Handke. It tells the story of an
Austrian of mixed German and Slovenian heritage, who goes to communist
Yugoslavia in a search for identity. David Pryce-Jones of The New York Times
wrote "The intention is to shatter Austrian complacency, utterly to reject
the national conspiracy of silence and evasion, so that the Austrian at last
can be his own man. Admirable as this would be, Mr. Handke is not the writer
for it. To some extent, the alienation of this novel is attributable to the
deliberate distancing of its style." Pryce-Jones continued: "More
crucially, Repetition reveals one man set so implacably against his fellows
that he can do nothing but pity himself and hate them. Surrender to these
reactions serves to extend the Nazi legacy rather than to destroy it. New
beginnings without humanity are not new beginnings at all."
--Short
Letter, Long Farewell is a 1972 novel by the Austrian writer Peter
Handke. It tells the story of a young Austrian writer who travels across the
United States in search of his wife from whom he is estranged. The film director John Ford appears as a character who brings resolution at the end
of the road on the coast of California. His film Young Mr. Lincoln also serves
as a point of reference and an antidote to the alienation experienced by the
stranger crossing the States. The novel shares many themes and motifs with the
film Alice in the Cities from 1974, directed by Handke's frequent collaborator
Wim Wenders; the film can be seen as a response to the book.
--A
Sorrow Beyond Dreams is a 1972 semi-autobiographical novella by the
Austrian writer Peter Handke. It is based on the life of Handke's mother.
Thomas
Curwen of the Los Angeles Times wrote in 2003: "Mental illness is a phrase
you won't find in Handke's account of his mother's death, yet it surely waits
in the wings. ... While the pleasure, if this is the word, of reading Handke
comes from the existential assumptions of his story, it is important to realize
that suicide -- the reality, as opposed to the idea (which Camus seemed to
savor) -- is not an existential dilemma. It is the final, tragic outcome of a
psychiatric illness. Yet how prepared are we for this knowledge?"
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