In this visionary novel, Nobel Prize winner Peter Handke offers
descriptions of objects, relationships, and events that teach readers a
renewed way of seeing; he creates a wealth of images to replace those
lost to convention and conformity.
On the outskirts of a northwestern European river port city lives a
powerful woman banker, a public figure admired and hated in equal
measure, who has decided to turn from the worlds of high finance and
modern life to embark on a quest. Having commissioned a famous writer to
undertake her authentic biography, she journeys through the Spanish
Sierra de Gredos and the region of La Mancha to meet him. As she travels
by all-terrain vehicle, bus, and finally on foot, the nameless
protagonist encounters five way stations that become the stuff of her
biography and the biography of the modern world, a world in which
genuine images and unmediated experiences have been exploited and
falsified by commercialization and by the voracious mass media.
Crossing the Sierra de Gredos is a very human book of yearning and the
ancient quest for love, peopled with memorable characters (from multiple
historical periods) and imbued with Handke's inimitable ability to
portray universal, inner-worldly adventures that blend past, future,
present, and dreamtime.
