Evoking The Arabian Nights in his title and again in his first sentence (“Every country has its Samarkand and its Numancia”), Peter Handke’s narrator links this story to legendary tales told by characters who must keep telling stories to escape danger. There is no plague here, as in Boccaccio’s Decameron, but the houseboat moored on the Morava River is compared to Numancia, the last place of refuge for Spanish Celts from the Roman Empire; and on this night “between the wars”, the narrator joins others on a houseboat for a night of storytelling by the boot’s owner, an ex-author back from a lengthy journey through Europe. In the telling of stories through the night and in the recounting of stories about the stories, in

This article in full comprises 1656 words but only the first 150 or so words are available to non-members.

All our articles have been written recently by experts in their field, more than 95% of them university professors. To read about membership, please click here.

Published 02 December 2008

Citation: Abbott, Scott. "Die morawische Nacht". The Literary Encyclopedia. 2 December 2008.
[http://www.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=24866, accessed 20 November 2009.]