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Overview
On the outskirts of a northwestern European riverport city lives a powerful woman banker, a public figure admired and hated in equal measure, who has decided to turn from the worlds of high finance and modern life to embark on a quest. Having commissioned a famous writer to undertake her "authentic" biography, she journeys through the Spanish Sierra de Gredos and the region of La Mancha to meet him. As she travels by allterrain vehicle, bus, and finally on foot, the nameless protagonist encounters five way stations that become the stuff of her biography and the biography of the modern world, a world in which genuine images and unmediated experiences have been exploited and falsified by commercialization and by the voracious mass media.
In this visionary novel, Peter Handke offers descriptions of objects, relationships, and events that teach readers a renewed way of seeing; he creates a wealth of images to replace those lost to convention and conformity. Crossing the Sierra de Gredos is also a very human book of yearning and the ancient quest for love, peopled with memorable characters (from multiple historical periods) and imbued with Handke's inimitable ability to portray universal, inner-worldly adventures that blend past, future, present, and dreamtime.
Synopsis
On the outskirts of a northwestern European riverport city lives a powerful woman banker, a public figure admired and hated in equal measure, who has decided to turn from the worlds of high finance and modern life to embark on a quest. Having commissioned a famous writer to undertake her "authentic" biography, she journeys through the Spanish Sierra de Gredos and the region of La Mancha to meet him. As she travels by allterrain vehicle, bus, and finally on foot, the nameless protagonist encounters five way stations that become the stuff of her biography and the biography of the modern world, a world in which genuine images and unmediated experiences have been exploited and falsified by commercialization and by the voracious mass media.
In this visionary novel, Peter Handke offers descriptions of objects, relationships, and events that teach readers a renewed way of seeing; he creates a wealth of images to replace those lost to convention and conformity. Crossing the Sierra de Gredos is also a very human book of yearning and the ancient quest for love, peopled with memorable characters (from multiple historical periods) and imbued with Handke's inimitable ability to portray universal, inner-worldly adventures that blend past, future, present, and dreamtime.
The Washington Post - Guy Vanderhaeghe
Peter Handke's Crossing the Sierra De Gredos, set in an unspecified time in the 21st century, is a beautifully hallucinatory, eerily compelling novel…Handke's novel skips, darts and strikes sidelong blows. By turns, it is a novel of ideas, a satire, a poetically sensual evocation of the natural world and a hymn to longing…Mile by mile, glittering bit by glittering bit, Handke creates a brilliant mosaic that justifies the ecstatic affirmation with which he concludes his novel, an affirmation that bears comparison with Molly Bloom's in Ulysses. Great writers teach us to read anew. Perhaps Handke is one of them.
Editorials
From the Publisher
"The artistry of Peter Handke's language may well be unsurpassed among contemporary writers in German. His prose is at once serpentine and spare, dreamlike and exacting. In his latest novel translated into English, Crossing the Sierra de Gredos, the Austrian author richly demonstrates his literary gifts, and the translator, Krishna Winston, sensitively renders the mesmerizing beauty of his style. In this book, as in much of Handke's previous work, the most stirring passages disclose the inherent strangeness of the world." —Ross Benjamin, Bookforum"A complex quest for meaning . . . Yeats called it 'the fascination of what's difficult.' Nobody writing today surpasses Peter Handke at trying to make sense of it all." —Kirkus Praise for Peter Handke: "Hanke'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
"Numerous pleasures await the reader who delves into the fabric of Handke's prose . . . A subtle writer of unostentatious delicacy, Handke excels at fiction that, as it grows, coils around itself like wisteria . . . This is where the French New Novel might have gone if pushed." —Paul West, Washington Post Book World
Guy Vanderhaeghe
Peter Handke's Crossing the Sierra De Gredos, set in an unspecified time in the 21st century, is a beautifully hallucinatory, eerily compelling novel…Handke's novel skips, darts and strikes sidelong blows. By turns, it is a novel of ideas, a satire, a poetically sensual evocation of the natural world and a hymn to longing…Mile by mile, glittering bit by glittering bit, Handke creates a brilliant mosaic that justifies the ecstatic affirmation with which he concludes his novel, an affirmation that bears comparison with Molly Bloom's in Ulysses. Great writers teach us to read anew. Perhaps Handke is one of them.—The Washington Post
Publishers Weekly
In the atmospheric latest from Handke (The Goalie's Anxiety at the Penalty Kick, etc.), a nameless female banker in a nameless northern European city decides for obscure reasons to repeat a journey to Spain she took years before, and to commission a nameless author from La Mancha to write her biography. The journey provides a hopscotch structure for the drifting narrative, marked by fantastic events that may or may not be taking place and by speculative conversations with the dreamlike figures the woman meets. As she travels, the woman is stalked, possibly, by a half-brother whose name may or may not be Vladimir. When the woman arrives in La Mancha, she dictates the details of her life to the writer, with no particular regard for order or veracity. An intrusive narrative voice interjects with rhetorical questions, exclamations and rambling philosophical asides. Much time is spent either denying the truth of what's just been said or in defining events, people or objects through a series of overturning negations. Though beautiful in spots and sometimes witty, the novel is inconsistent and repetitive. For die-hard Handke fans, the appeal of this metafictional fable is in its playful surrender to chance. (July)
Copyright 2007 Reed Business InformationLibrary Journal
Like Handke's earlier novels, this most recently translated work from the Austrian-born playwright, poet, essayist, and novelist (A Sorrow Beyond Dreams) hardly manages to escape experimentation. A wealthy financial savant living in an unnamed river-port city commissions a successful literary author to write her biography-or to create it for her. However, before it can be written, she must travel by plane, automobile, and foot to meet the mysterious writer somewhere in La Mancha. Thus begins her odyssey and perhaps her most important accomplishment yet, causing us to question throughout whether this novel itself is her biography. Unfortunately, the story simultaneously engages and confuses. There is definite originality and the occasional humorous passage, but overall the narration is too disjunctive, and the lengthy sentences and countless colons and semicolons make for a bumpy read. This whimsical style is good for minute detail, at which Handke excels, but clarity is fleeting. As with Handke's other work, this novel isn't for everyone, but it is still important for major literature collections and a refreshing break from recent cookie-cutter literary fiction. Recommended for larger public and academic libraries.
—Stephen Morrow