Peter Handke

Handke tells the story of an Austrian writer - a man much like Handke himself - who undergoes a "metamorphosis" from self-assured artist into passive "observer and chronicler." He explores the world and describes his many severed relationships, from his tenuous contact with his son, to a failed marriage to "the Catalan," to a doomed love affair with a former Miss Yugoslavia. As the writer sifts through his memories, he is also under pressure to complete his next novel, but he cannot decide how to come to terms with both the complexity of the world and the inability of his novel to reflect it.

Published in Germany in 1996, A Journey to the Rivers created a firestorm of controversy, being likened, by some, to revisionist writings mitigating Nazi guilt for World War II. But that is a grave misreading of the book, for Peter Handke proffers no justification or explanations for Serbian atrocities in the Balkan conflict. A Journey to the Rivers is, rather, both a scathing criticism of Western war reporting, which Peter Handke describes as lazy and mendacious, and a wonderfully sensitive and nuanced travelogue through Serbia.

Ein Panorama, das weit über alle literarischen Genres hinausreicht und sie sich zugleich anverwandelt. Hier durchdringen sich Prosa und Drama, Theatralisches und Poetisches, Geschichtliches und Persönliches. Das Jaunfeld, im Süden Österreichs, in Kärnten: Dort versammeln sich um ein "Ich" dessen Vorfahren: die Großeltern und deren Kinder, unter ihnen die eigene Mutter. Gestaltet Peter Handke eine beispielhafte Familientragödie in Szenen? Erzählt er anhand einzelner Stationen das Epos eines Volkes, der Slowenen? Entwirft er das Geschichtsdrama der ewigen Verlierer? Oder wendet er sich, erzählend-dramatisch, zurück zur eigenen Biographie, deren Voraussetzungen und Folgen?

Nachdem Peter Handke, der vor kurzem 75 wurde, sein Notizbuch letztes Jahr erstmals in der Berliner Galerie Klaus Gerrit Friese ausgestellt hat, macht er es nun - als gedrucktes Schirmer/Mosel-Buch - allen Lesern zugänglich. Abgebildet ist immer, gleichsam als Faksimile, das ganze Blatt mit Bild und Schrift. Die Seiten haben eine ungeheure, ganz eigene, entdeckerische Poesie, die der seines schriftstellerischen Werks in nichts nachsteht. Auch wenn Peter Handke darauf besteht, dass das Wort "Zeichnung' in Anführungsstrichen zu verstehen ist, da er kein ausgebildeter Zeichner sei, gehören diese zauberhaften Zeichenblätter, entstanden zwischen 2007 und 2017, nicht nur zum Schönsten, was es derzeit zu sehen gibt. Sie werfen darüber hinaus ein neues, faszinierendes Licht auf einen der wichtigsten Autoren der Gegenwart.

"On a Dark Night I Left My Silent House is Peter Handke's novel about one man's conflict with himself and his journey toward resolution. During one night shift, an unnamed middle-aged pharmacist in Taxham, an isolated suburb of Salzburg, tells his story to a narrator. The pharmacist is known and well respected, but lonely and estranged from his wife. He feels most comfortable wandering about in nature. One day he receives a blow to the head that leaves him unable to speak, and the narrative moves from ironic description into a collection of sensual impressions, observations, and reflections. The pharmacist, who is now called the driver, sets out on a quest, traveling with two companions - a former Olympic skiing champion and a once famous poet - into the Alps, where he is beaten and later stalked by a woman. He drives through a tunnel and has a premonition of death, then finds himself in a surreal, foreign land. In a final series of bizarre, cathartic events, the driver regains his speech and is taken back to his pharmacy - back to his former life, but forever changed."--BOOK JACKET.

Kein Urteil, kein literarisches Denkmal für eine Mutter, kein abgeschlossenes Bild, nach dessen Beendigung der Autor und mit ihm der Leser befreit aufatmen könnte, sondern die Beschreibung einer grausigen offenen Wunde. - Helmut Scheffel - Back cover. Peter Handke's mother, Maria Handke, committed suicide in 1971. Within a few weeks, Peter Handke set about the task of reconstructing his mother's life in the form of a narrative. As he explains in the story, he did this partly in order to come to terms with his own grief, by attempting to make sense of the path her life had taken, and partly to give substance to her existence by creating a memorial. Handke constantly assesses the course of his mother's life in relation to the social, historical, political, and cultural influences to which she was exposed. - Introduction of Manchester University Press edition (1993).

Peter Handke's dramatic poem Walk about the Villages is the fourth part of Handke's "homecoming cycle," whose other three parts [A Slow Homecoming, The Lesson of St. Victoire, and A Child Story] can be found under the American title A Slow Homecoming. The underlying story line of Walk about the Villages could not be simpler. The "prodigal" writer Gregor returns to his home village. He and his brother Hans, a construction worker, and his shopkeeper sister have a dispute over the disposition of the house which the parents had built and the land which they had cleared with their own hands many years before. Within this straightforward conflict, Handke touches upon almost every aspect of our existence. It is a lyrical play, a poetic drama on the order of Thornton Wilder's Our Town, and Dylan Thomas' Under Milk Wood. It is an "Everyman and Everywoman" dramatic poem for our time.

A romantic fantasy about an angel who wishes he were mortal and is willing to fall from the sky if it means a chance to fall in love. Set in modern day Berlin, the film follows angel Damiel's path from heavenly flight to earthly delight in a manner that's comical, touching and entertaining.