A career-spanning collection of essays by the Nobel laureate Peter
Handke, featuring two new works never before published in English
Quiet Places brings together Peter Handke's forays into the border
regions of life and story, upending the distinction between literature
and the literary essay. Proceeding from the specificity of place (the
mountains of Carinthia and Spain, the hinterlands of Paris) to specific
objects (the jukebox, the boletus mushroom) to the irreducible
particularity of our moods and mental impressions, these works--each a
novella in its own right--offer rare insight into the affinities that
can develop between a storyteller and the unlikeliest of subjects. Here,
Handke posits a reevaluation of the possibilities and proper concerns of
literature in a style unmistakably his own.
This collection unites the three essays from The Jukebox with two new
works: "Essay on a Mushroom Maniac," the story of a friend's descent
into and ascent from the depths of obsession, and "Essay on Quiet
Places," a memoiristic tour d'horizon of bathrooms and their place in
Handke's life and work. Featuring masterful translations by Krishna
Winston and Ralph Manheim, this collection encapsulates the oeuvre of
one of our greatest living writers.
