Once Again for Thucydides: Fiction

By Peter Handke

Book Overview

Once Again for Thucydides is a collection of seventeen "micro-epics" written by Peter Handke on trips around the world, from the Balkans to the Pyrenees, from Salzburg to the sea of Hokkaido in Japan. In each journal, Handke concentrates on small things he observes, trying to capture their essence, their "simple, unadorned validity." What results is a work of remarkable precision, in which he uncovers the general appearance of random objects--an ash tree, a shoeshine man, hats in a crowd, a boat loading on a pier--and discovers their inner workings and mystery. Always, his writing hints at the unknown. Describing the snow melting in a garden or falling during a train ride through inland Japan, the glowworms illuminating the plains in Friuli, the tidal waters flowing and receding off the Atlantic coast of Spain, these amazing little "epics" reveal a narrator obsessed with the wonders of detail and marveling, as are we, at the scope and variety of the natural world.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0811213889
• ISBN13: 9780811213882
• Release Date: September 1998
• Publisher: New Directions
• Length: 90 Pages
• Weight: 0.54 lbs.
• Dimensions: 8.3" x 0.6" x 5.7"

Customer Reviews

Beautifully written

This short read (90 pages) is a wonderful collection of descriptions Handke made while visiting different cities. Each description reveals an indulgent use of visual and even auditory imagery to open up the natural world and its influence on the observer.Handke's fairy tale of an ash tree in Munich is an especially intriguing version of a classic genre.

Beauty of language - clarity of thought

These "travel" essays verge on being prose poems. Peter Handke uses close observation of the world around him to weave an image of the world within - both personal and universal. In this way he produces a remarkable study on the human condition. Add to your must read list especially if you have any fondness for M. Duras or A. Ernaux.