Description

Book Synopsis

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



Trade Review
A 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 Knausgaard
The author reports and meditates upon the silent catastrophes that continuously befall the human interior -- WG Sebald

The Goalkeepers Anxiety at the Penalty Kick

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    A Paperback / softback by Peter Handke, Michael Roloff

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    Order before 4pm today for delivery by Wed 2 Sep 2026.

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      Book details

      Publisher Penguin Random House Group
      Imprint Penguin Classics
      Published 6 August 2020
      ISBN-13 9780241457696
      978-0241457696
      ISBN-10 0241457696
      Also in:
      Fiction Contemporary Fiction Books by Peter Handke

      Description

      Book Synopsis

      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



      Trade Review
      A 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 Knausgaard
      The author reports and meditates upon the silent catastrophes that continuously befall the human interior -- WG Sebald

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