The time is an unspecified modernity, the place possibly Europe. Absence follows four nameless people -- the old man, the woman, the soldier, and the gambler -- as they journey to a desolate wasteland beyond the limits of an unnamed city.
"A remarkably abstract book even for the very abstract Handke ...Slippery but engrossing work, silkily translated." - Kirkus Reviews
The time is an unspecified modernity, the place possibly Europe. Absence follows four nameless people -- the old man, the woman, the soldier...
Handke's novel tells the story of a quiet, organized classics teacher named Andreas Loser. One night, on the way to his regularly scheduled card game, he passes a tree that has been defaced by a swastika. Impulsively yet deliberately, he tracks down the defacer and kills him. With this act, Loser has crossed an invisble threshold, and will be stuck in this secular purgatory until he can confess his crime.
Handke's novel tells the story of a quiet, organized classics teacher named Andreas Loser. One night, on the way to his regularly scheduled card ga...
The first of Peter Handke's novels to be published in English, The Goalie's Anxiety at the Penalty Kick is a true modern classic that "portrays the...breakdown of a murderer in ways that recall Camus's The Stranger" (Richard Locke, The New York Times). The self-destruction of a soccer goalie turned construction worker who wanders aimlessly around a stifling Austrian border town after pursuing and then murdering, almost unthinkingly, a female movie cashier is mirrored by his use of direct, sometimes fractured prose that conveys "at its best a seamless blend of lyricism...
The first of Peter Handke's novels to be published in English, The Goalie's Anxiety at the Penalty Kick is a true modern classic that "portr...
Kaspar, Peter Handke's first full-length drama--hailed in Europe as "the play of the decade" and compared in importance to Waiting for Godot--is the story of an autistic adolescent who finds himself at a complete existential loss on the stage, with but a single sentence to call his own. Drilled by prompters who use terrifyingly funny logical and alogical language-sequences, Kaspar learns to speak "normally" and eventually becomes creative--"doing his own thing" with words; for this he is destroyed.
In Offending the Audience and Self-Accusation,...
Kaspar, Peter Handke's first full-length drama--hailed in Europe as "the play of the decade" and compared in importance to Waiting for Go...
This volume contains Handke's work from the 1970s. It includes Kaspar, in which the playwright explores the power of language as a means of oppression - a means of creating artificial uniformity by teaching people to comprehend the world only in terms of the speech patterns they are given.
This volume contains Handke's work from the 1970s. It includes Kaspar, in which the playwright explores the power of language as a means of oppression...
Short Letter, Long Farewell is one the most inventive and exhilarating of the great Peter Handke's novels. Full of seedy noir atmospherics and boasting an air of generalized delirium, the book starts by introducing us to a nameless young German who has just arrived in America, where he hopes to get over the collapse of his marriage. No sooner has he arrived, however, than he discovers that his ex-wife is pursuing him. He flees, she follows, and soon the couple is running circles around each other across the length of America--from Philadelphia to St. Louis to the Arizona desert, and...
Short Letter, Long Farewell is one the most inventive and exhilarating of the great Peter Handke's novels. Full of seedy noir atmospherics and ...
A MODERN MASTER'S WRY AND ENTERTAINING TAKE ON HISTORY'S BEST-KNOWN LOVER
In Don Juan, Peter Handke offers his take on the famous seducer. Don Juan's story--"his own version"--is filtered through the consciousness of an anonymous narrator, a failed innkeeper and chef, into whose solitude Don Juan bursts one day. On each day of the week that follows, Don Juan describes the adventures he experienced on that same day a week earlier. The adventures are erotic, but Handke's Don Juan is more pursued than pursuer. What makes his accounts riveting are the...
A MODERN MASTER'S WRY AND ENTERTAINING TAKE ON HISTORY'S BEST-KNOWN LOVER
Der syrische Dichter Adonis, der in Paris lebt, und der griechische Dichter Analis - aus Gegenden, welche die Geburt der ltesten Zivilisationen begnstigt haben, getrnkt von klarem, der Unendlichkeit geffnetem Licht, Verneiner der Rechtglubigkeiten, Trumer einer polytheistischen Welt -, vertraut mit dem Krieg, der Liebe und dem Tod, Brger des Mittelmeeres und Eingebrgerte des Okzidents und der Wste -: was sie eint, ihre Heimat, das ist die Poesie.
Der syrische Dichter Adonis, der in Paris lebt, und der griechische Dichter Analis - aus Gegenden, welche die Geburt der ltesten Zivilisationen begnst...
Durch seine Neuübersetzung der "Helena" des Euripides hat Peter Handke, zusammen mit "Prometheus, gefesselt" von Aischylos und "Ödipus in Kolonos" von Sophokles, eine Trilogie ganz eigener Art geschaffen: drei eminente Stücke der drei großen griechischen Tragödiendichter. "Helena" zählt zu den weniger bekannten Stücken 412 v. Chr. in Athen zum ersten Mal vor Publikum gebracht, entfaltet Euripides seine eigene Geschichte der schönen Helena. Bei ihm wird sie von Hera auf der ägyptischen Insel Pharos in Sicherheit gebracht, sie selbst ist also nicht in Troja, sondern nur ihr Ebenbild....
Durch seine Neuübersetzung der "Helena" des Euripides hat Peter Handke, zusammen mit "Prometheus, gefesselt" von Aischylos und "Ödipus in Kolonos" v...