Books by Peter Handke

Portrait of Peter Handke

Peter Handke, the Austrian novelist, playwright, and essayist, is renowned for his precise, contemplative prose and his exploration of language, perception, and alienation. From his early experimental works to later, more reflective narratives, Handke's writing continually challenges the boundaries of storytelling and the reader's relationship with reality.

Winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature, his oeuvre spans decades of innovation, from the provocative to the profoundly introspective. His books invite readers to slow down, observe the ordinary with new intensity, and consider how words shape the world we inhabit-making each title a distinctive encounter with thought and form.

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101 products


  • Peter Handke Plays Offending the Audience My Foot

    Bloomsbury Publishing PLC Peter Handke Plays Offending the Audience My Foot

    5 in stock

    Book SynopsisThis 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.Trade ReviewHandke's play is a downright attack on the way language is used by a corrupt society to depersonalise the individual. * Michael Billington, The Guardian (on Kaspar) *Handke's most sustained study in social indoctrination . . . there could be no better introduction to Handke. * The Times (on Kaspar) *Table of ContentsOffending the Audience;My Foot My Tutor;Self Accusation;Kaspar;Lake Constance;They are Dying Out

    5 in stock

    £20.89

  • Slow Homecoming

    The New York Review of Books, Inc Slow Homecoming

    1 in stock

    Book SynopsisBy Nobel Prize Winner Peter HandkeProvocative, romantic, and restlessly exploratory, Peter Handke is one of the great writers of our time. Slow Homecoming, originally published in the late 1970s, is central to his achievement and to the powerful influence he has exercised on other writers, chief among them W.G. Sebald. A novel of self-questioning and self-discovery, Slow Homecoming is a singular odyssey, an escape from the distractions of the modern world and the unhappy consciousness, a voyage that is fraught and fearful but ultimately restorative, ending on an unexpected note of joy. The book begins in America. Writing with the jarring intensity of his early work, Handke introduces Valentin Sorger, a troubled geologist who has gone to Alaska to lose himself in his work, but now feels drawn back home: on his way to Europe he moves in ominous disorientation through the great cities of America. The second part of the book, “The Lesson of Mont Sainte-Victoire,” identifies Sorger as a projection of the author, who now writes directly about his own struggle to reconstitute himself and his art by undertaking a pilgrimage to the great mountain that Cézanne painted again and again. Finally, “Child Story” is a beautifully observed, deeply moving account of a new father—not so much Sorger or the author as a kind of Everyman—and his love for his growing daughter.

    1 in stock

    £12.74

  • The LeftHanded Woman

    Penguin Books Ltd The LeftHanded Woman

    10 in stock

    Book SynopsisWINNER OF THE NOBEL PRIZE FOR LITERATURE''One of Europe''s great writers'' Karl Ove KnausgaardOne evening Marianne, a suburban housewife living in an identikit bungalow, is struck by the realization that her husband will leave her. Whether at that moment, or in years to come, she will be deserted. So she sends him away, knowing she must fend for herself and her young son. As she adjusts to her disorienting new life alone, what she thought was fear slowly starts to feel like freedom.''Knifelike clarity of evocation ... Handke is a kind of nature poet, a romantic whose exacerbated nerves cling like pained ivy to the landscape'' John UpdikeTranslated by Ralph ManheimTrade ReviewHandke 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 -- Richard Locke * The New York Times *

    10 in stock

    £8.54

  • Repetition

    Penguin Books Ltd Repetition

    2 in stock

    Book SynopsisWINNER OF THE NOBEL PRIZE FOR LITERATURE''Repetition made a great and, as I have since learned, lasting impression on me'' W. G. SebaldFilip 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 JosipoviciTranslated by Ralph ManheimTrade ReviewHandke's eminence, displayed in a substantial oeuvre of plays, novels and poems, is reaffirmed brilliantly by [Repetition] -- Publisher's WeeklyKnifelike clarity of evocation ... Handke is a kind of nature poet, a romantic whose exacerbated nerves cling like pained ivy to the landscape -- John Updike

    2 in stock

    £9.49

  • The Goalkeepers Anxiety at the Penalty Kick

    Penguin Books Ltd The Goalkeepers Anxiety at the Penalty Kick

    5 in stock

    Book SynopsisWINNER OF THE NOBEL PRIZE FOR LITERATURE''Portrays the breakdown of a murderer in ways that recall Camus'' The Stranger'' The New York TimesJoseph 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 TimesTranslated by Michael RoloffTrade ReviewA seamless blend of lyricism and horror seen in the runes of a disintegrating world * Boston Sunday Globe *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 -- Richard Locke * The New York Times *One of Europe's great writers -- Karl Ove KnausgaardThe author reports and meditates upon the silent catastrophes that continuously befall the human interior -- WG Sebald

    5 in stock

    £7.99

  • The Goalies Anxiety at the Penalty Kick

    Farrar, Straus & Giroux Inc The Goalies Anxiety at the Penalty Kick

    10 in stock

    Book Synopsis

    10 in stock

    £13.50

  • A Sorrow Beyond Dreams

    Farrar, Straus and Giroux A Sorrow Beyond Dreams

    10 in stock

    Book SynopsisNobel Prize winner Peter Handke--the extravagantly talented Austrian playwright of chutzpah, novelist of sensibility, poet of linguistic games (Kirkus)--ponders the life and early death of his motherThe Sunday edition of the Kärntner Volkszeitung carried the following item under Local News'': In the village of A. (G. township), a housewife, aged 51, committed suicide on Friday night by taking an overdose of sleeping pills.''So opens A Sorrow Beyond Dreams, Handke''s reckoning with his mother''s life--which spanned the rise of the Nazis, World War II, and postwar suffering--and death. Both stark and lyrical, full of love, anger, admiration, and a keen sense of history, this slim book reveals Handke at his most lucid and direct. It is the most moving and accessible work in his distinguished career; it is indispensable (Bill Marx, The Boston Globe).

    10 in stock

    £13.50

  • The Fruit Thief

    Farrar, Straus & Giroux Inc The Fruit Thief

    10 in stock

    Book SynopsisA major new novel from the Nobel laureate Peter Handkeone of his most inventive and dazzlingly original worksOn a summer day under a blue sky a man is stung on his foot by a bee. The sting signaled that the time had come to set out, to hit the road. Off with you. The hour of departure has arrived. The man boards a train to Paris, crosses the city by Métro, then boards another, disembarking in a small town on the plains to the north. He is searching for a young woman he calls the Fruit Thief, who, like him, has set off on a journey to the Vexin plateau. What follows is a vivid but dreamlike exploration of topography both physical and affective, charting the Fruit Thief's perambulations across France's internal borderlands: alongside rivers and through ravines, beside highways and to a bolt-hole under the stairs of an empty hotel. Chance encounterswith a man scrambling through the underbrush in search of his lost cat, and with a delivery boy who abandons his scooter to

    10 in stock

    £21.00

  • Kaspar Modern Plays

    Bloomsbury Publishing PLC Kaspar Modern Plays

    15 in stock

    15 in stock

    £11.99

  • Till Day You Do Part

    Seagull Books London Ltd Till Day You Do Part

    15 in stock

    Book SynopsisA monologue delivered by the female character in Samuel Beckett's play Krapp's Last Tape.

    15 in stock

    £12.34

  • Storm Still

    Seagull Books London Ltd Storm Still

    15 in stock

    Book SynopsisA series of monologues, chronicling both the battle of the Slovene minority in Austria against Nazism and their love of the land.

    15 in stock

    £12.34

  • The Great Fall

    Seagull Books London Ltd The Great Fall

    1 in stock

    Book SynopsisTrade Review“You are advised to read this book, take a cane, tuck a feather onto your hat like the hero, and to follow him . . . It is for your own good, reader, you will not regret it . . . This is a straightforward narration with plain and elegant sentences. The book is reminiscent of Handke’s beginnings, and it is impressive . . . German literature is not conceivable without Peter Handke.” * Die Zeit *Table of ContentsN

    1 in stock

    £9.99

  • The Second Sword A Tale from the Merry Month of

    Picador The Second Sword A Tale from the Merry Month of

    1 in stock

    Book Synopsis Two novellas by Peter Handke-his first works to be published since he won the 2019 Nobel Prize in Literature. The Second Sword and My Day in the Other Land are two novellas by the 2019 Nobel laureate Peter Handke. The first picks up the story where Handke's last work of fiction, The Fruit Thief (described in The New York Times as an experience of unadulterated literature), left off. Here a man has returned to his home in the suburbs of Paris, only to soon set out again. Why? We learn, over the course of a story redolent of Handke's harrowing A Sorrow Beyond Dreams, that he is seeking to avenge his mother, who has been unjustly denounced in the pages of a newspaper. The Second Sword is a suspenseful work of self-examination: Will the narrator's journey end in him throwing down the gauntlet?My Day in the Other Land is the first work written by Handke after he was awarded the Nobel Prize. Evoking imagery f

    1 in stock

    £14.40

  • The Fruit Thief

    St Martin's Press The Fruit Thief

    Out of stock

    Book SynopsisA major new novel from the Nobel laureate Peter Handkeone of his most inventive and dazzlingly original worksOn a summer day under a blue sky a man is stung on his foot by a bee. The sting signaled that the time had come to set out, to hit the road. Off with you. The hour of departure has arrived. The man boards a train to Paris, crosses the city by Métro, then boards another, disembarking in a small town on the plains to the north. He is searching for a young woman he calls the Fruit Thief, who, like him, has set off on a journey to the Vexin plateau. What follows is a vivid but dreamlike exploration of topography both physical and affective, charting the Fruit Thief's perambulations across France's internal borderlands: alongside rivers and through ravines, beside highways and to a bolt-hole under the stairs of an empty hotel. Chance encounterswith a man scrambling through the underbrush in search of his lost cat, and with a delivery boy who abandons his scooter to

    Out of stock

    £13.59

  • Short Letter, Long Farewell

    The New York Review of Books, Inc Short Letter, Long Farewell

    2 in stock

    Book SynopsisBy Nobel Prize Winner Peter HandkeShort 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 from Portland, Oregon, to L.A. Is it love or vengeance that they want from each other? Everything’s spectacularly unclear in a book that is travelogue, suspense story, domestic comedy, and Western showdown, with a totally unexpected Hollywood twist at the end. Above all, Short Letter, Long Farewell is a love letter to America, its landscapes and popular culture, the invitation and the threat of its newness and wildness and emptiness, with the promise of a new life—or the corpse of an old one—lying just around the corner.

    2 in stock

    £14.39

  • Insel Verlag GmbH Notizbuch Nr 4 31 August 1978 18 Oktober 1978

    2 in stock

    Book Synopsis

    2 in stock

    £13.25

  • Insel Verlag GmbH Berichterstatter des Tages

    2 in stock

    Book Synopsis

    2 in stock

    £21.25

  • Suhrkamp Verlag AG Kindergeschichte

    1 in stock

    Book Synopsis

    1 in stock

    £6.99

  • Suhrkamp Verlag AG Die Stunde der wahren Empfindung

    3 in stock

    Book Synopsis

    3 in stock

    £15.13

  • Suhrkamp Verlag AG Die Tablas von Daimiel Ein Umwegzeugenbericht zum

    Out of stock

    Book Synopsis

    Out of stock

    £9.35

  • Suhrkamp Verlag Publikumsbeschimpfung und andere Sprechstucke

    1 in stock

    Book Synopsis

    1 in stock

    £9.86

  • Kaspar

    Suhrkamp Verlag Kaspar

    1 in stock

    Book Synopsis

    1 in stock

    £9.86

  • Suhrkamp Verlag AG Gedichte

    1 in stock

    Book Synopsis

    1 in stock

    £13.90

  • Suhrkamp Verlag AG Mein Tag im anderen Land Eine Dmonengeschichte

    1 in stock

    Book Synopsis

    1 in stock

    £16.20

  • Suhrkamp Verlag AG Noch einmal fr Thukydides

    3 in stock

    Book Synopsis

    3 in stock

    £12.60

  • Suhrkamp Verlag AG Die Stunde da wir nichts voneinander wuten Ein

    3 in stock

    Book Synopsis

    3 in stock

    £12.60

  • Suhrkamp Verlag AG Mndliches und Schriftliches Zu Bchern Bildern und

    Out of stock

    Book Synopsis

    Out of stock

    £16.20

  • Suhrkamp Verlag AG Gedicht an die Dauer

    Out of stock

    Book Synopsis

    Out of stock

    £12.60

  • Suhrkamp Verlag AG Phantasien der Wiederholung

    2 in stock

    Book Synopsis

    2 in stock

    £13.50

  • Suhrkamp Verlag Die Angst des Tormanns beim Elfmeter

    Out of stock

    Book Synopsis

    Out of stock

    £9.99

  • Suhrkamp Verlag AG Die Unvernnftigen sterben aus

    1 in stock

    Book Synopsis

    1 in stock

    £10.45

  • Suhrkamp Verlag AG Falsche Bewegung

    2 in stock

    Book Synopsis

    2 in stock

    £7.51

  • Die Hornissen

    Suhrkamp Verlag Die Hornissen

    Out of stock

    Book Synopsis

    Out of stock

    £10.92

  • Suhrkamp Verlag Die Stunde der wahren Empfindung

    1 in stock

    Book Synopsis

    1 in stock

    £10.92

  • Suhrkamp Verlag Das Gewicht der Welt

    7 in stock

    Book Synopsis

    7 in stock

    £11.25

  • Suhrkamp Verlag Langsame Heimkehr

    2 in stock

    Book Synopsis

    2 in stock

    £12.76

  • Suhrkamp Verlag Die Lehre des Saint-Victoire

    1 in stock

    Book Synopsis

    1 in stock

    £8.74

  • Suhrkamp Verlag AG Der Chinese des Schmerzes

    Out of stock

    Book Synopsis

    Out of stock

    £14.40

  • Suhrkamp Verlag Nachmittag eines Schriftstellers

    2 in stock

    Book Synopsis

    2 in stock

    £9.86

  • Suhrkamp Verlag AG Die Abwesenheit Ein Mrchen

    1 in stock

    Book Synopsis

    1 in stock

    £9.50

  • Suhrkamp Verlag AG Der Hausierer

    1 in stock

    Book Synopsis

    1 in stock

    £8.00

  • Suhrkamp Verlag Abschied des Traumers/Winterliche

    Out of stock

    Book Synopsis

    Out of stock

    £14.88

  • Suhrkamp Verlag AG In einer dunklen Nacht ging ich aus meinem

    2 in stock

    Book Synopsis

    2 in stock

    £11.40

  • Suhrkamp Verlag AG Lucie im Wald mit den Dingsda Eine Geschichte

    1 in stock

    Book Synopsis

    1 in stock

    £10.45

  • Suhrkamp Verlag Uber die Dorfer

    1 in stock

    Book Synopsis

    1 in stock

    £11.48

  • Suhrkamp Verlag AG Der kurze Brief zum langen Abschied

    7 in stock

    Book Synopsis

    7 in stock

    £9.00

  • Suhrkamp Verlag Wunschloses Ungluck

    1 in stock

    Book Synopsis

    1 in stock

    £8.74

  • Suhrkamp Verlag Die linkshandige Frau

    1 in stock

    Book Synopsis

    1 in stock

    £10.12

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