Since the publication of his first novel and his dramatic entry onto the literary stage in 1966, the Austrian-born writer Peter Handke has been one of the most prolific, respected and controversial figures in German language literature in the later half of the twentieth century. A novelist, playwright, poet, essayist and filmmaker, Handke has enjoyed critical success in a variety of genres and has remained on the vanguard of European literature since his first publications. Once a perennial candidate for the Nobel Prize, his more recent political writings, particularly a series of essays in the late 1990s on the former Yugoslavia, have turned many critics against him and have again placed him at the center of controversy. Nevertheless, …
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