"My mother has been dead for almost seven weeks: I had better go to work before the need to write about her, which I felt so strongly at her funeral, dies away and I fall back into the dull speechlessness with which I reacted to the nerves of her suicide."
So begins Peter Handke's extraordinary confrontation with his mother's death. In a painful and courageous attempt to deal with the almost intolerable horror of her suicide, he sets out to piece together the facts of her life, as he perceives them. What emerges is a loving portrait of inconsolable grief, a woman whose lively spirit has been crushed not once but over and over again by the miseries of her place and time. Yet well into middle age, living in the Austrian village of her birth, she still remains haunted by her dreams.
"…no one has been able to dispute the truth of the Nobel’s actual citation, of Handke as a writer who “with linguistic ingenuity has explored the periphery and the specificity of human experience”… Handke’s writing also gives words to the voiceless ordeals long considered too mundane for literature." — Financial Times
Peter Handke, dramatist, novelist, poet, essayist and writer of screenplays, was born in Griffen, Austria in 1942. Handke has been awarded many literary prizes, including the Schiller Prize in 1972 and the Kafka Prize in 1979, which he turned down. He now lives and works in Paris.
"My mother has been dead for almost seven weeks: I had better go to work before the need to write about her, which I felt so strongly at her funeral, dies away and I fall back into the dull speechlessness with which I reacted to the nerves of her suicide."
So begins Peter Handke's extraordinary confrontation with his mother's death. In a painful and courageous attempt to deal with the almost intolerable horror of her suicide, he sets out to piece together the facts of her life, as he perceives them. What emerges is a loving portrait of inconsolable grief, a woman whose lively spirit has been crushed not once but over and over again by the miseries of her place and time. Yet well into middle age, living in the Austrian village of her birth, she still remains haunted by her dreams.
Reviews
"…no one has been able to dispute the truth of the Nobel’s actual citation, of Handke as a writer who “with linguistic ingenuity has explored the periphery and the specificity of human experience”… Handke’s writing also gives words to the voiceless ordeals long considered too mundane for literature." — Financial Times
Author
Peter Handke, dramatist, novelist, poet, essayist and writer of screenplays, was born in Griffen, Austria in 1942. Handke has been awarded many literary prizes, including the Schiller Prize in 1972 and the Kafka Prize in 1979, which he turned down. He now lives and works in Paris.
