Handke and his mother (a Carinthian Slovene whose suicide in 1971 is the subject of Handke's A Sorrow Beyond Dreams, a reflection on her life) lived in East Berlin from 1944 to 1948 before resettling in Griffen. According to some of his biographers, his stepfather Bruno's alcoholism and the limited cultural scope in the small town have contributed to Handke's revolt against habitualness and restrictions.
In 1954 Handke was sent to a Roman Catholic boys' boarding school in Tanzenberg, Carinthia. Here, he published his first texts in the school paper, the Fackel. In 1959, he moved to Klagenfurt, where he went to high school. In 1961, he commenced law studies at the University of Graz.
Ever the enfant terrible, Peter Handke exemplifies the complexity of writing as an Austrian in the postwar period, and his work has continually provoked controversy and outrage on a variety of fronts.
While studying, he established himself as writer, linking up with the Grazer Gruppe (the Graz Authors' Assembly), an association of young writers. The group published the literary digest manuskripte. Both Elfriede Jelinek and Barbara Frischmuth were among its members.
Handke abandoned his studies in 1965, when the German Suhrkamp Verlag accepted his novel Die Hornissen (The Hornets) for publication.
He gained popular attention after a spectacular appearance at a meeting of avant garde artists belonging to the Gruppe 47 in Princeton, New Jersey, U.S., where he presented his play Publikumsbeschimpfung (Offending the Audience).
He became one of the co-founders of the publishing house Verlag der Autoren in 1969 and participated as a member of the group Grazer Autorenversammlung from 1973 to 1977.
Handke has written many scripts for films. He directed Die linkshändige Frau (The Left–Handed Woman), which was released in 1978. Leonard Maltin's Movie Guide's description of the film is that a woman demands that her husband leave and he complies. "Time passesand the audience falls asleep". This film was nominated for the Golden Palm Award at the Cannes Film Festival in 1978 and won the Gold Award for German Art House Cinemas in 1980. Handke has also won the 1975 German Film Award in Gold for his screenplay Falsche Bewegung.
During the 1980s, he travelled extensively, visiting amongst other places, Alaska, Japan and Yugoslavia.
After leaving Graz, Handke lived in Düsseldorf, Berlin, Kronberg (all in Germany), in Paris, France, in the U.S. (1978 to 1979) and in Salzburg, Austria (1979 to 1988). Since 1991, he has lived in Chaville near Paris.
When Elfriede Jelinek was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2004, she stated that she considered Peter Handke a more worthy recipient than herself and that she had been awarded the prize merely because she is female.
In 1996 his travelogue Eine winterliche Reise zu den Flüssen Donau, Save, Morawa und Drina oder Gerechtigkeit für Serbien (A Journey to the Rivers: Justice for Serbia) created considerable controversy, as Handke portrayed Serbia among the victims of the Balkan War. In the same essay, Handke also frontally attacked Western media for misrepresenting the causes and consequences of the war. This controversy still rages. Former Yugoslavian president Slobodan Milo?evi? asked that Handke be summoned as witness for the defence before the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, but the writer declined. He did, however, visit the tribunal as a spectator, and later published his observations in Die Tablas von Daimiel (The Tablas of Daimiel).
On 18 March 2006, in front of more than 20,000 mourners at the funeral of Slobodan Milo?evi?, Handke gave a speech in Serbian which sparked much controversy in the West. Handke later denied expressing "his happiness at being close to Milo?evi? who defended his people". In fact, in a letter to the French Nouvel Observateur, he offered a translation of his speech: "The world, the so-called world, knows everything about Yugoslavia, Serbia. The world, the so-called world, knows everything about Slobodan Milo?evi?. The so-called world knows the truth. This is why the so-called world is absent today, and not only today, and not only here. I don't know the truth. But I look. I listen. I feel. I remember. This is why I am here today, close to Yugoslavia, close to Serbia, close to Slobodan Milo?evi?".
Handke's positions regarding the war in Yugoslavia were challenged by the Slovenian writer and essayist Drago Jan?ar and the two have engaged in a long polemic.
In 2006 Handke was nominated for the Heinrich Heine Prize, but the prize money of ?50,000 is subject to approval by the city council of Düsseldorf. Members of the council's major parties stated they would vote against awarding the prize to Handke, resulting in the prize being withdrawn.
He has two daughters: Amina, from his relationship with Libgart Schwarz, and another daughter with Sophie Semin. Handke has been living with the German actress Katja Flint since 2001.
