With which book to start in the world of Peter Handke

The Argentineans discovered Peter Handke (Austria, 1942) in the 80s, when he was the screenwriter of the now legendary film "The Wings of Desire", of Wim Wenders, which started with a beautiful poem that repeated like a litany "When the child was a child."

"When the child was a child,
He hung with his arms,
I wanted the creek to be a river,
that the river was a torrent,
and this puddle of the sea … "

The film is incredibly beautiful and tells the story of an angel who wants to be human. It's a wonderful song for life and the pleasure of having a coffee, walking down the street or falling in love.

The Nobel Prize for Literature is awarded to the Polish Olga Tokarczuk (2018) and the Austrian Peter Handke (2019)

The director was already known to moviegoers and became famous around the world for this movie. But many other fans of The wings of desireWe wanted to know who was the author of such beautiful verses and we discovered a fantastic writer who made melancholy and sadness his way of telling.

If you have to choose a book to start reading now Nobel Prize for Literature 2019, the ideal is "The fear of the goalkeeper against the penalty" (1970). It is a crime novel in which a former football goalkeeper kills a woman, far from hiding, normally pursues her life. But the masterful writing of the Austrian makes the reader feel throughout the story, as he stood in the arc line waiting for a kick of repair. It also did not go unnoticed by Wenders, who had also taken her to the cinema, in collaboration with Handke. Another of the joint works of the director and the author was Wrong move, a film where they adapted a Goethe novel, "Years of Learning by Wilhelm Meister".

But let's go to the other works of this author, who deserves the Nobel Prize only for the poem quoted at the beginning of this note. Before his film of consecration, the Argentine public already had a translation of hornets (1966), his first novel, which he wrote after three plays. Gaspar, Insults to the public and The parish wants to be a guardian.

1972 is another of his great works "Short letter of goodbye"And also this year is"Bad luck"The other works are The moment of sensation (1975), La gauche (1976), which adapts and films with its staging, Slow return (1979), The doctrine of Sainte-Victoire (1980), History Children (1981), The Chinese Pain (1983), The Repetition (1986), The Absence (1987), The Afternoon of a Writer (1987), L & 39; year I spent in person bay (1994), One dark night, I left my quiet home (1997), Lucie in the forest with these things (1999), said Don Juan himself (2004), Kali Eine Vorwintergeschichte (2007), The Night of Morava (2008), The Great Fall (2011), Die Obstdiebin, Einfache Fahrt ins Landesinnere (2017).

How to read the winners of the Nobel Prize for Literature in Argentina

With a clean and seemingly cold style, Handke tells with mastery and beauty everything he touches. His texts are a long reflection on pain, literary creation, loneliness, silence, human relations and contemplation. In this sense, the author is encouraged to tell in "The afternoon of a writer", all that he sees on his way during an after-the-fact noon, thus achieving a beautiful and sad story about loneliness and writing.

Few affection for giving interviews, he once said: "I simply write. I like to write, not speak. Talking makes me tired. Do not talk about it, do not talk about anything. Writing confronts the same problems as philosophy. The right, the representation, the meaning of the acts. But philosophy really becomes for me only the writing. Tell stories. Ideals often create traps, "he said in a note to Osvaldo Muñoz in a newspaper interview. The country it's been years. Excellent definition for a writer who these days will have the discomfort of being on everyone's lips.