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Book Cover for: Don Juan: His Own Version, Peter Handke

Don Juan: His Own Version

Peter Handke

Nobel Prize winner Peter Handke offers a wry and entertaining take on history's most famous seducer as he takes a respite from his stressful existence

Don Juan's story--"his own version"--is filtered through the consciousness of an anonymous narrator, a failed innkeeper and chef, into whose solitude Don Juan bursts one day. On each day of the week that follows, Don Juan describes the adventures he experienced on that same day a week earlier. The adventures are erotic, but Handke's Don Juan is more pursued than pursuer. What makes his accounts riveting are the remarkable evocations of places and people, and the nature of his narration. Don Juan: His Own Version is, above all, a book about storytelling and its ability to burst the ordinary boundaries of time and space.

In this brief and wry volume, Peter Handke conjures images and depicts the subtleties of human interaction with an unforgettable vividness. Along the way, he offers a sharp commentary on many features of contemporary life.

Book Details

  • Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
  • Publish Date: Feb 1st, 2011
  • Pages: 112
  • Language: English
  • Edition: undefined - undefined
  • Dimensions: 7.10in - 4.60in - 0.50in - 0.22lb
  • EAN: 9780374532642
  • Categories: LiteraryWorld Literature - Austria

About the Author

Handke, Peter: - Peter Handke was born in Griffen, Austria, in 1942. His many novels include The Goalie's Anxiety at the Penalty Kick, A Sorrow Beyond Dreams, My Year in the No-Man's-Bay, and Crossing the Sierra de Gredos, all published by FSG. Handke's dramatic works include Kaspar and the screenplay for Wim Wenders's Wings of Desire. Handke is the recipient of many major literary awards, including the Georg Büchner, Franz Kafka, and Thomas Mann Prizes and the International Ibsen Award. In 2019, he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature "for an influential work that with linguistic ingenuity has explored the periphery and the specificity of human experience."
Winston, Krishna: - Krishna Winston is the Marcus L. Taft Professor of German Language and Literature at Wesleyan University. She has translated more than thirty books, including previous works by Peter Handke and works by Werner Herzog, Günter Grass, Christoph Hein, and Goethe.

More books by Peter Handke

Book Cover for: A Sorrow Beyond Dreams: A Life Story, Peter Handke
Book Cover for: The Goalie's Anxiety at the Penalty Kick, Peter Handke
Book Cover for: Short Letter, Long Farewell, Peter Handke
Book Cover for: Afternoon of a Writer, Peter Handke
Book Cover for: Quiet Places, Peter Handke
Book Cover for: Moment of True Feeling, Peter Handke
Book Cover for: Kaspar and Other Plays, Peter Handke
Book Cover for: Fruit Thief, Peter Handke
Book Cover for: The Ballad of the Last Guest, Peter Handke
Book Cover for: Absence, Peter Handke
Book Cover for: On a Dark Night I Left My Silent House, Peter Handke
Book Cover for: Jukebox and Other Essays on Storytelling, Peter Handke
Book Cover for: Repetition, Peter Handke
Book Cover for: Left-Handed Woman, Peter Handke
Book Cover for: Ride Across Lake Constance and Other Plays, Peter Handke

Praise for this book

"Handke's power of observation and his seemingly casual tone, in which every word bears indispensable weight, are as mesmerizing as ever . . . A Handke tale invites active reading, speculation rather than passive absorption . . . It is [his] loving gaze, honed by time and discipline, that shows readers the way out again into the world's prolific and astonishing strangeness." --KAI MARISTED, The New York Times Book Review

"Handke's perfectly suave novella is a rich tapestry of contradictions about desire and class that, besides its other pleasures, tweaks us with the facts that the chef, not Juan, narrates it and that it provocatively begs the question, Version of what?" - Booklist