Absence

by Peter Handke, Ralph Manheim (Translator)

Overview

A “challenging and rewarding novel”* from Nobel Prize-winning author Peter Handke.

The time is an unspecified modernity, the place possibly Europe. Absence follows four nameless people — the old man, the woman, the soldier, and the gambler — as they journey to a desolate wasteland beyond the limits of an unnamed city.

“In this smoothly written fable, Handke forcefully summons readers to the recognition that the essence of human life lies in the striving for self-expression even though its perfect realization must always remain elusive.”—*Publishers Weekly

"A remarkably abstract book even for the very abstract Handke... Slippery but engrossing work, silkily translated." - Kirkus Reviews

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780374527631
Publisher:	Picador
Publication date:	06/15/2000
Pages:	118
Product dimensions:	5.00(w) x 8.00(h) x 0.30(d)

About the Author

Peter Handke was born in Griffen, Austria, in 1942. A novelist, playwright, and translator, he is the author of such acclaimed works as The Moravian Night, A Sorrow Beyond Dreams, The Goalie's Anxiety at the Penalty Kick, and Repetition. The recipient of multiple literary awards, including the Franz Kafka Prize and the International Ibsen Award, Handke is also a filmmaker. He wrote and directed adaptations of his novels The Left-Handed Woman and Absence, and co-wrote the screenplays for Wim Wenders’ Wrong Movie and Wings of Desire. He won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2019.

Editorial Reviews

German author Handke ( Afternoon of a Writer ) enlarges the recurrent metaphysical preoccupations of his prolific output in this latest challenging and rewarding novel. The story's four nameless protagonists meander through a surreally disconnected and flattened landscape. An old artist, a gambler ignorant of himself, a callow soldier whose self-effacing ``absence'' is a defense against the world, and a vain woman whose frantic mirror-staring fails to make her present to herself, ``roam''--as the novel's epigraph from Chuang Tzusp ok puts it--``in the palace of Nowhere, where all things are one.'' As they wander across an almost featureless northern plain, the past, present and future become one and the characters' insubstantial identities collapse into one another. But when they detect legible symbols in the surrounding blankness and read them with conviction, the landscape springs into recognizable life and the characters discover their strength. In this smoothly written fable, Handke forcefully summons readers to the recognition that the essence of human life lies in the striving for self-expression even though its perfect realization must always remain elusive. (May)

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

Four characters, identified only as the Old Man, the Woman, the Soldier, and the Gambler, travel to a remote wasteland bordering on an unnamed city. Seasons change overnight, the old man disappears, and the notebook he carries appears to the soldier in a dream, but despite evocative prose there's little direction here, only curious moments and a vague unease. Handke expects his readers to swallow each descriptive detail in this interminable journey, whether it deserves curiosity--or has any significance--or not. In his last novella (at just over 100 pages we should not overrate these slim volumes), the protagonist's experiences shed some light on the book's title ( Afternoon of A Writer, LJ 9/1/89). Absence , alas, is completely true to its title.-- Peter Bricklebank, City Coll., CUNY

Library Journal