"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," one-character "speak-ins," Handke further explores the relationship between public performance and personal identity, forcing us to reconsider our sense of who we are and what we know.

By Nobel Prize Winner Peter Handke
Provocative, 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.

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 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.

Seit Jahren war Valentin Sorger entfernt von allem, was sich unter dem Begriff ›Heimat‹ oder ›Familie‹ verstehen läßt. In seiner Daseinslust, im Bewußtsein seiner Stärke hatte er Bindungen und Beziehungen aufgegeben; Gefühle für Zurückgelassenes hatte er überlebt; er empfand keine Sehnsucht mehr; er war nicht einmal mehr imstande gewesen, den Gedanken an sein Kind zu Ende zu denken. Nun, in der Erkenntnis solchen Entferntseins, solcher Verlassenheit, bereitet sich die Heimkehr vor. Der Weg ist lang. Er führt von Alaska ― Sorger arbeitet hier am Rande einer Indianer- siedlung mit seinem Kollegen Lauffer als Geologe ― zunächst an die Westküste, dann an die Ostküste der USA, wo er einen Freund aus seinem Herkunftsland besuchen will; und er führt schließlich in die Stadt der Städte, in der Sorger ein Gesetz für sein Handeln (und das anderer) formulieren kann, das seine Heimkehr nach Europa notwendig und möglich zugleich macht: »Das ist ein gesetzgebender Augenblick: mich lossprechend von meiner Schuld, der selbstverantworteten und auch der nachgefühlten, verpflichtet er mich, den einzelnen immer nur zufällig Teilnahmsfähigen, zu einer so stetig wie möglich geübten Einmischung. Es ist zugleich mein geschichtlicher Augenblick: ich lerne (ja, ich kann noch lernen), daß die Geschichte nicht bloß eine Aufeinanderfolge von Übeln ist, die einer wie ich nur ohnmächtig schmähen kann ― sondern auch, seit jeher, eine von jedermann (auch von mir) fortsetzbare, friedensstiftende Form.«

The first of Peter Handke's novels to be published in English,
is a true modern classic that "portrays the breakdown of a murderer in ways that recall Camus's
" (Richard Locke,
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 and horror seen in the runes of a disintegrating world" (Bill Marx,

Peter Handke's mother was an invisible woman. Throughout her life, which spanned the Nazi era, the war, and the postwar consumer economy, she struggled to maintain appearances, only to arrive at a terrible recognition: "I'm not human any more." Not long after, she killed herself with an overdose of sleeping pills.
In
her son sits down to record what he knows, or thinks he knows, about his mother's life and death before, in his words, "the dull speechlessness—the extreme speechlessness" of grief takes hold forever. And yet the experience of speechlessness, as it marks both suffering and love, lies at the heart of Handke's brief but unforgettable elegy. This austere, scrupulous, and deeply moving book is one of the finest achievements of a great contemporary writer.

Peter Handke's mother was an invisible woman. Throughout her life—which spanned the Nazi era, the war, and the postwar consumer economy—she struggled to maintain appearances, only to arrive at a terrible recognition: "I'm not human any more." Not long after, she killed herself with an overdose of sleeping pills.

語言暴力，一旦化為文字，隱而不顯的凶惡能致人於死。
既然如此，我也將祭出我的「第二把劍」！
漢德克始終在探究語言的邊界、語言抵達的是什麼，
《第二把劍》是漢德克文學世界的最終意義。
2019年諾貝爾文學獎得主最新力作
漢德克對於正義與暴力的思索
復仇之日啟動，今天不是一個能靠希望度過的日子。
一生中，漢德克以文字為業，他前衛、大膽，充滿實驗性，他將語言視為神聖之物，然而，一名記者卻以語言玷汙了他以及他的母親。
「是的，暴力存在於我的某些行為，也以另一種更常發生、更猛烈的方式，存在於我的語言中。但我那些語言的暴力，一律都是口說，從來不是書寫下來的文字，我的意思是，不是給那些特定的閱聽大眾，為了出版所寫下的文字。那樣的書寫與記錄，將暴力化做文字，向來是我的大忌。」
一名女記者在報紙上寫了一篇針對他的文章，但不只是針對他而已，甚至指控他的母親其實是納粹的追隨者。
他知道，他不能坐視不管，他必須為他母親復仇，不計一切代價……
有些事情依靠法律並不一定能夠獲得解決，於是乎，受迫害者需要第二把劍，一把正義之劍，來消弭體制外的仇恨。以書寫做為銘刻，第二把劍就此而生。
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「第二把劍不是以鐵鑄造，而是以敘事本身鍊冶，又是一個出自信仰的傳說？可能是，但同時也是文學的勝利。」──Lothar Müller, 《南德日報》
「或許今日讀者會（也應該這麼）認為，這本書是作者漢德克對批評者的陰險報復，但對仰慕者而言卻是一場盛宴。一把十足的雙刃劍。」──Philipp Haibach,《文學世界》
「第二把劍是漢德克作品中罕見，能令讀者懸著一顆心直到最終的書：書中的『我』會對那位女記者採取報復行動嗎？這是一場文學遊戲，不僅關乎書裡所敘述的事，也關乎個人聲譽的認知。」──Sebastian Hammelehle,《明鏡週刊》
「本書巧妙地交雜著高明及做作……五月故事讀起來如春光般的輕盈，同時也是一場大師級『一本正經的遊戲』。」──Thomas E. Schmidt,《時代週報》
「五月故事中處處指涉漢德克長年以來所曾書寫過的片段……作者近乎戲謔地指涉自己的作品，大半輕巧敏捷，但總在關鍵處陡然深沉起來。」　Mladen Gladić, 《星期五週報》
「在漢德克的敘事宇宙中，《第二把劍》猶如一顆晶亮的拼花碎石。」──Werner Krause, 奧地利第二大報《小報》
「漢德克輕鬆地秀出一張張藏在袖子裡的牌，故事起初看起來像是隨意的堆疊，但漸漸地形成一個複雜的結構，過程中作者不時對著讀者眨眼。他書中的主角從不令人厭惡，因他從來不是個嗜殺者……這也使得這個復仇故事展現出不相符的輕盈並維持了歡快的平衡。」——Michael Wurmitzer, 奧地利《標準報》
「漢德克的五月故事，具文學大師風範的自我探索文本，卻同時驚人地令人困惑。」──Ulrich Kühn,《北德廣播文化台》
「《第二把劍》挾著鬥志激昂的標題走進文學，漢德克史詩以夢遊者的姿態銜接上荷馬史詩……漢德克以古典史詩的迴響空間消釋了敘事與宗教間的界線，但這不該被認作神學上的堅信，而應視其為一種『文學涵蓋一切』的表達。」──Helmut Böttiger, 《德國廣播文化台》
「漢德克這本新書充分展現出大師的描寫功力……創造出一種不會太快過期的文學藝術形式，甚至在百年後還能引發閱讀者的熱情。」──Ulf Heise,《中德廣播》
「最終那樣自然而然導向結束的方式，令讀者動容，其他人可能仍是無動於衷。他們會保持沉默嗎？我想是不會的。」──Lothar Struck, 《文采與庸乏──文學與當代批評雜誌》
「……畢竟沒有人能夠質疑諾貝爾文學獎的讚美，做為一個作家，漢德克『憑藉著語言的獨創性探索了邊境，以及人類經驗的特殊性』，他的著作給予了文學無聲的考驗，在他的語言底下，過往的文學都顯得太過平凡了。」──《金融時報》