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Book Review of 3 X Handke (Collier Fiction)

3 X Handke (Collier Fiction)
coolelle avatar reviewed Three Short Works on + 19 more book reviews


Description from the back cover...

"3 X Handke" contains three of Peter Handke's most popular and critically acclaimed works. In "The Goalie's Anxiety at the Penalty Kick", an alienated construction worker loses his grip on language until his misinterpreted words and misguided actions culminate in homicide. In "Short Letter, Long Farewell", the Austrian protagonist travels across America in search of his missing wife who left him with only these words: "I am in New York. Please don't look for me. It would not be nice for you to find me." And in "A Sorrow Beyond Dreams", Handke confronts the suicide of his mother in a compelling first-person narrative reminiscent of Simone de Beauvoir's "A Very Easy Death", that reads "like an explanation of a recurrent dream, a dream so vividly expressed it becomes our dream" (Chicago Sun-Times). Poignant, piercing, and powerfully suggestive, "3 X Handke" is a commanding demonstration of why Peter Handke is considered "one of the most original and provocative of contemporary writers" (The New York Times Book Review).