Repetition

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WINNER OF THE NOBEL PRIZE FOR LITERATURE 
 
'Repetition made a great and, as I have since learned, lasting impression on me' W. G. Sebald 
 
Filip Kobal, an Austrian teenager, is on the trail of his missing older brother Gregor, who he never knew. All he has is two of Gregor's books: a school copy book, and a dictionary in which certain words have been marked. As he enters Slovenia on his journey, Filip discovers something else entirely: the transformative power of language to describe the world, and the unnerving joy of being an outsider in a strange land. 
 
'One of the most moving evocations I have ever read of what it means to be alive, to walk upon this earth' Gabriel Josipovici 
 
Translated by Ralph Manheim

Handke's eminence, displayed in a substantial oeuvre of plays, novels and poems, is reaffirmed brilliantly by [Repetition]

Knifelike clarity of evocation ... Handke is a kind of nature poet, a romantic whose exacerbated nerves cling like pained ivy to the landscape

We join the young Austrian teenager Filib Kobal's journey from his home in Carinthia to Slovenia on the trail of his older brother Gregor, whom he never knew. He is armed only with two of Gregor's books: a copy book from agricultural school, and a Slovenian-German dictionary, in which Gregor has marked certain words. To piece together an image of his brother, he pours over Gregor's notebook and marked dictionary. In the latter, he discovers new words which translate into timeless images of the earth and its people. Filip finds he can associate himself with this discovery. The resulting investigation of the laws of language and naming becomes a transformative investigation of himself and the world around him.

The Goalkeeper's Anxiety at the Penalty Kick

WINNER OF THE NOBEL PRIZE FOR LITERATURE 
 
'Portrays the breakdown of a murderer in ways that recall Camus' The Stranger' The New York Times 
 
Joseph Bloch, a once-famous goalkeeper turned construction worker, commits a random murder without thought or regret. As he wanders the streets, from hotel to bar, cinema to tram stop, experiencing strange and violent encounters on the way, he finds himself, and everything around him, disintegrating. Told in spare and icy prose, Peter Handke's masterpiece of alienation takes apart our ideas of humanity and reality itself. 
 
'A Kafkaesque crime novel' Los Angeles Times 
 
Translated by Michael Roloff

A seamless blend of lyricism and horror seen in the runes of a disintegrating world

Handke became the enfant terrible of the European avant-garde, denouncing all social, psychological and historical categories of experience as species of linguistic fraud. But [he] has aged well and now...is regarded as one of the most important writers in German

The author reports and meditates upon the silent catastrophes that continuously befall the human interior

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 Handke's use of direct, sometimes fractured prose that conveys the dislocation and déjà vu of modern twentieth-century life.

Peter Handke

Ralph Manheim

One evening, when Marianne and her husband, Bruno, are dining out together to celebrate his return from a business trip, Marianne listens to him speak and realizes suddenly yet finally that Bruno will leave her. Whether at that moment, or in years to come, she will be deserted. And instinctively Marianne knows she must fend for herself and her young son now, before that time comes. 
 
She sends Bruno away and settles down to a life alone, at first experiencing moments of panic, restlessly wandering in rooms grown stifling. The stillness of the house wears her down, and she starts taking long walks, or visiting with her close friend, Franziska. 
 
Gradually, what began as a selfish escape from the prospects of the future becomes in fact liberation. The environment she'd always hated - a no man's land of identical houses, with all curtains drawn - recedes; her relationships with those dear to her become less threatening, less necessary; and Marianne finds a new pattern for her life and the strength to go on alone.

Peter Handke

Praise for The Left-Handed Woman

Handke became the enfant terrible of the European avant-garde, denouncing all social, psychological and historical categories of experience as species of linguistic fraud. But [he] has aged well and now...is ...

Books by Peter Handke

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