Slow Homecoming
- ISBN-10
- 1590173074
- ISBN-13
- 9781590173077
- Category
- Fiction
- Pages
- 296
- Language
- English
- Published
- 2009-03-31
- Publisher
- New York Review of Books
- Author
- Peter Handke
Description
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.
Get the book
Similar books
-
On a Dark Night I Left My Silent House: A Novel
By Peter HandkeOn a Dark Night I Left My Silent House is Nobel Prize winner Peter Handke's evocative, moving, often fantastic, short novel about one man's conflict with himself and his journey toward resolution.
-
Short Letter, Long Farewell
By Peter HandkeFull 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.
-
Slow Days, Fast Company: The World, The Flesh, and L.A.
By Eve BabitzOne man proved elusive, however, and so Babitz did what she did best, she wrote him a book. Slow Days, Fast Company is a full-fledged and full-bodied evocation of a bygone Southern California that far exceeds its mash-note premise.
-
Heidegger in the Literary World: Variations on Poetic Thinking
By Florian Grosser, Nassima SahraouiThis volume traces the ways in which Heidegger’s philosophical thinking has been taken up, critically re-appropriated, and disseminated in literary and poetic writing since the middle of the 20th century.
-
The Afternoon of a Writer: A Novel
By Peter HandkeIn Nobel Prize-winning author Peter Handke's The Afternoon of a Writer, a writer, fearful of losing his abilities and hence his connection with the world, takes an afternoon walk and has several encounters that reaffirm his confidence...
-
Liu Xiaodong: Slow Homecoming : Retrospective, 1983-2018
By Xiaodong LiuIn his oeuvre, Liu Xiaodong shows moments and stories from human life as well as situations and landscapes with an outstanding immediacy and extraordinary empathy.
-
Baron Wenckheim's Homecoming
By László KrasznahorkaiWINNER OF THE 2019 NATIONAL BOOK AWARD FOR TRANSLATED LITERATURE "Krasznahorkai’s masterpiece" (The Millions); "Apocalyptic, visionary, and mad" (Publishers Weekly); "One of the supreme achievements of contemporary literature" (Paris ...
-
The Allegorical Imperative: Greg Creek's Slow Homecoming
By Margaret Plant, Juliana Engberg, Greg CreekThe Allegorical Imperative: Greg Creek's Slow Homecoming
-
The Heretic's Guide to Homecoming: Book One: Theory
By Sienna TristenA vivid coming-of-age story that explores the struggles of chronic anxiety and self-doubt within a richly-detailed fantasy setting.
-
Heathersleigh Homecoming (The Secrets of Heathersleigh Hall Book #3)
By Michael PhillipsIt was late in the afternoon when Mrs. Weldon looked up again from her desk and saw the same young woman standing before her from earlier. It was obvious she had been crying. “Hello, my dear,” she said. “I . .