The Second Sword: A Tale from the Merry Month of May, and My Day in the Other Land: A Tale of Demons: Two Novellas

by Peter Handke, Krishna Winston (Translator)

Two novellas by Peter Handke―his first new works since he won the 2019 Nobel Prize in Literature.

The Second Sword and My Day in the Other Land are two new novellas by the 2019 Nobel laureate Peter Handke. The first picks up the story where Handke’s last work of fiction, The Fruit Thief (described in The New York Times as “an experience of unadulterated literature ”), left off. Here a man has returned to his home in the suburbs of Paris, only to soon set out again. Why? We learn, over the course of a story redolent of Handke’s harrowing A Sorrow Beyond Dreams , that he is seeking to avenge his mother, who has been unjustly denounced in the pages of a newspaper. The Second Sword is a suspenseful work of Will the narrator’s journey end in him throwing down the gauntlet?

My Day in the Other Land is Handke’s most recently published work―and the first to be written after he was awarded the Nobel Prize. Evoking imagery from the Bible and classical mythology, it portrays a man who has been possessed by demons, causing him to rage endlessly against the inhabitants of his rural village. Aided by his sister, he embarks on a journey to a lake on whose opposite shore lies the “other land.” What ensues is an exorcism of sorts―and one of Handke’s most evocative and original endings. Together, The Second Sword and My Day in the Other Land are essential new entries in a body of work like no other.

181 pages, Hardcover

Published February 6, 2024

About the author

Peter Handke (* 6. Dezember 1942 in Griffen, Kärnten) ist ein österreichischer Schriftsteller und Übersetzer.

Peter Handke is an Avant-garde Austrian novelist and playwright. His body of work has been awarded numerous literary prizes, including the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2019. He has also collaborated with German director Wim Wenders, writing the script for The Wrong Move and co-writing the screenplay for Wings of Desire.

Reviews

[Kyle Henrichs]

So bad it's barely better than genre fiction.

[Isak Bakkeli]

DNF: feberaktig og svermende bok med en essayistisk stil på kanten til uleselig.

[michal k-c]

The Second Sword reads like a slightly more racist variation on several older Handke novels, so not great. Ignoring that, My Day in the Other Land — his first new fiction after receiving the Nobel – is very good; troubling and a bit cryptic, like the best of Handke. Unfortunate that it was too short to be published alone.

[Hanna]

The two novellas of Peter Handke – “The Second Sword” and “My Day in the Other Land” are connected by the motive of a journey. In “The Second Sword,” the same man who was a protagonist of another Handke’s novel, “The Fruit Thief,” once more decides to leave his home –as usual, he leaves the door unlocked – and travels to avenge his mother. She was wrongly denounced in a newspaper, and he is determined to punish a woman responsible for the insulting article. The journey proves to have its own merits, and, as he observes people and things around him, giving the exquisite description even to two plumes of smoke rising from a grill, the story is more about a journey than the purpose.

The second novella describes a complex travel – from madness to calmness. A fruit farmer possessed by demons leaves his land and voyages to another place across the lake. This is more of a life journey, freeing him from the voices inside, allowing others to enter his mind, and even finding love. Still, there is uncertainty if the end of a trip brings permanent peace; perhaps it’s just a more extended break until the demons in his head reappear.

Peter Handke’s style is unique: beautiful language, the constant monologue inviting and asking a reader for confirmation or just an opinion, and taking the minor details in, giving them their own life, as if they were suddenly brought to the surface. These beautifully translated two novellas are like poems; haunting language infuses the usual landscape and regular people with a somehow ethereal, more profound mood.

[Jerry Muzsik]

can't go wrong with mr. Handke. ya, it's usually some dude walking around thinking about things, and the dude is not really knowing what to think about the things he's thinking about - but, well, it's so just so damn pretty. nothing showy, nothing fancy, just lucid human thought