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Bis daß der Tag euch scheidet oder Eine Frage des Lichts

Peter Handke

Till Day You Do Part Or A Question of Light

»Described as an answer to or at least an echo of Samuel Beckett’s Krapp’s Last Tape?, Till Day You Do Part Or A Question of Light is a monologue delivered by the ›she‹ in Beckett’s play. This unnamed female similarly recalls other significant women protagonists in Handke’s own work such as The Left-handed Woman. Handke prefaces the monologue in Till Day You Do Part Or a Question of Light with a description of two stone figures. While the male figure remains ›as dead and gone as anyone can,‹ the female bursts into life, and her monologue gradually focuses on Krapp’s use of pauses and language to dominate the other characters in the Beckett play. Ultimately, however, her complaints and critique of Krapp become a declaration of her love for Krapp or at least an affirmation of their attachment, as the two of them are ultimately bound together, perhaps even inseparable.

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English world rights (Seagull), Spanish world rights (Casus Belli); previously published in the respective language / territory; rights available again: Bulgaria (Black Flamingo)

Über die Dörfer

Peter Handke

Walk About the Village

A conflict develops between siblings Gregor, Hans and Sophie about their parents‘ hose. As the eldest son, Gregor has inherited the house and the piece of land after the parents’s death but Hans asks him to relinquish it for the sister’s sake. Over the course of their disputes the three seek and exile one another, help each other and fight to the point of wanting to annihilate the other. Handke’s research into a possibility of existing in our times, started with his story The Long Way Around, finds its conclusion and its culmination here.

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UK & Commonwealth (Methuen), Spanish world rights (Pocketbook edition: Alianza), Chinese simplex rights (Horizon), Russia (Eksmo), France (Gallimard), Serbia (Laguna); previously published in the respective language / territory; rights available again: USA & Canada (Ariadne Press), Italy (Garzanti), Netherlands (Arbeiderspers), Bulgaria (Narodna Kultura)

Die Fahrt im Einbaum oder Das Stück zum Film vom Krieg

Peter Handke

Voyage by Dugout or The Play of the Film of the War

Two directors meet in the foyer of the Hotel Acapulco in a small provincial town in the heart of the Balkan in order to cast the actors for a planned film on the war that took place in the area a decade ago. And so they have the potential actors for the film – a tourist guide, an historian, three journalists – audition. In the process, the two directors are shown the contradictions of this region: all the opposing assessments and accusations can be heard during this parade in the hotel foyer. The two directors – and with them the readers and the audience – can form their own opinion on the events. And over the course of the play the readers are also going to learn what the movie of the war is going to look like and what the dugout that is lying in the foyer throughout the play and that can go anywhere is all about.

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Chinese simplex rights (Horizon); previously published in the respective language / territory; rights available again: Spanish world rights (Hiru), France (La Différence), Serbia (Paideia), Greece (Exandas)

Immer noch Sturm

Peter Handke

Storm Still

A panorama that reaches beyond all literary genres while simultaneously transforming them, here prose and drama, the theatrical and the poetical, the historical and the personal are fused.

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English world rights (Seagull), Spanish world rights (Casus Belli), Chinese simplex rights (Horizon), Arabic world rights (Kalima), France (Bruit du Temps), Norway (Samlaget), Slovenia (Wieser), Serbia (Laguna), Turkey (Kültür)

Publikumsbeschimpfung und andere Sprechstücke

Peter Handke

Offending the Audience and Other Spoken Pieces

These three pieces without a plot, without a scenenery, and without props are spoken pieces that, built around the sound elements of beat music, make language itself its content, they are attempts at regaining reality through language in theatre. They draw on the natural modes of expression of insult, self-accusation, confession, statement, question, justification, excuse, prophecy, appeals for help. In them, the author destroys the illusory character of even modern plays: the actors are the observers, the audience is the subject. By suspending theatre, Handke creates a new kind of theatre.

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Publikumsbeschimpfung [Offending the Audience]: USA & Canada (FSG), UK & Commonwealth (Bloomsbury), Spanish world rights (Pocketbook edition: Alianza), Chinese simplex rights (Horizon), Brazilian Portuguese rights (Perspectiva), France (L’Arche), Italy (Quodlibet), Korea (Minumsa), Serbia (Laguna); previously published in the respective language / territory; rights available again: Catalan rights (Institut del Teatre), Netherlands (Bruna), Czech Republic (Artur), Israel (Or Am)

Selbstbezichtigung [Self-Accusation]: USA & Canada (FSG), UK & Commonwealth (Bloomsbury), France (L’Arche), Italy (Quodlibet); previously published in the respective language / territory; rights available again: Catalan rights (Institut del Teatre), Netherlands (Bruna)

Weissagung [Divination]: France (L’Arche), Italy (Quodlibet); previously published in the respective language / territory; rights available again: Catalan rights (Institut del Teatre), Netherlands (Bruna)

Der Ritt über den Bodensee

Peter Handke

The Ride Across Lake Constance

»The […] play The Ride Across Lake Constance, deals directly with one of Handke's favorite themes: the realities of theater itself, independent of the offstage world, and the way language (dialogue) and objects (props) operate in the skewed world of the stage. Handke's plays bear witness to the truth of Richard Gilman's observation that ›in Handke's theater, language, exposed, assaulted, wrestled with, driven to limits, and pursued still further, begins to take on, like the color returning to the cheeks of a nearly hanged man, the signs of a strange and unexpected resurrection.‹« (book description from the US edition by FSG)

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USA & Canada (FSG), UK & Commonwealth (Bloomsbury), France (L’Arche), Korea (io-edition); previously published in the respective language / territory; rights available again: Spain (Institut del Teatre), Netherlands (Bruna), Poland (Ksiegarnia Academicka)

Die schönen Tage von Aranjuez

Peter Handke

The Beautiful Days of Aranjuez

Characters: a nameless woman, a nameless man: a simple couple. They meet in order to talk about love, first loves, and what a man and a woman feel when they are with each other. They talk about how you talk about love. For whoever talks about love, inevitably talks about nature, about history – about that which gives life meaning.

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Spanish world rights (Casus Belli), France (Bruit du Temps), Norway (Samlaget), Japan (Ronsosha), Serbia (Laguna), Slovenia (Hermagoras/Mohorjeva založba), Turkey (Kültür)

Die Unschuldigen, ich und die Unbekannte am Rand der Landstraße

Peter Handke

The Innocent, Me and the Unknown Woman by the Side of the Road

The time frame, in which the new play by Peter Handke is set, is clearly denoted: it spans over »four seasons«. The place: a country road, a »common country road«? The protagonists: »I«, who is seated by the side of this country road. And who can transform from a dramatic player into an epic narrator.

Rights available

Zdeněk Adamec

Peter Handke

Zdeněk Adamec

»An extensive scene«, a public place, »definitely not a free space«; possibly in the Spanish province of Avila or in Humpolec in Bohemia, now or at another time. A narrator who is one of »us« describes the place and time of the play that is to come. The actors are those left over from an originally densely populated scene: locals, newcomers, residents, foreigners, the young, the old, perhaps the last guests of a party. The drama – which they present over the course of an evening, and then a night – has already taken place: In March 2003, 18-year-old Zdeněk Adamec publically burned himself on Wenceslas Square in Prague in protest against the state of the world.

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France (Gallimard), Poland (Adit), Czech Republic (Větrné mlýny), Serbia (Laguna)

Und dann/Vom Verschwinden vom Vater/Drei sind wir

Wolfram Höll

And Then/Of the Disappearance of the Father/Three Are We

»The child speaks, it narrates and counts the apartment blocks, the big stones on the playground, the floors and doorbells, and before you know it, you are caught in an arithmetic of loss, are saddened by the number, a three that always refers to a four that, unfortunately, does not exist, and the two suffers under the three, under the missing of one. The child counts and there is no counting rhyme that could undo the absence and retrieve what has been lost, because even a counting rhyme ends with the delineating ›out goes you‹. Rarely has a text moved me so sadly and cheered me up with its intelligent fragility,« writes the playwright Ewald Palmetshofer about Wolfram Höll’s multi-award winning debut And Then.

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Russia (Of the Disappearance of the Father; Libra), France (L’Arche)

Die Ermittlung

Peter Weiss

The Investigation

Between December 1963 and August 1965, the Auschwitz trial was held in Frankurt/Main. In it, the ones responsible for the functioning of the machinery of annihilation stood in front of a tribunal.

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USA (Dramatic Publishing), UK (Marion Boyars), France (L’Arche Editeur), Italy (Einaudi), Sweden (Epix); previously published in the respective language / territory; rights available again: Spanish world rights (Grijalbo), Netherlands (Meulenhoff), Denmark (Niels Bings Forlag), Norway (Pax), Korea (Hankook Munhwasa), Japan (Hakusuisha), Czech Republic (Orbis), Hungary (Europa), Romania (Paralela 45), Slovenia (Rilindja- Pristina), Turkey (Sinan)

Die Verfolgung und Ermordung Jean Paul Marats dargestellt durch die Schauspielgruppe des Hospizes zu Charenton unter Anleitung des Herrn de Sade

Peter Weiss

The Persecution and Assassination of Jean Paul Marat

Peter Weiss’s play keeps close to historical facts and is founded on authentic material, but remains as far from a historical play as possible. Life and death of Jean Paul Marat are depicted as a game inside the game, as theatre inside the theatre, thirteen years after his death in the asylum of Charenton.

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USA (Dramatic Publishing), UK (Marion Boyars), Spanish world rights (Adriana Hidalgo), France (L’Arche), Italy (Einaudi), Japan (Hakusuisha), Czech Republic (Artur), Turkey (Imge), Albania (K & B), Georgia (Ilia State UP); previously published in the respective language / territory; rights available again: Catalan rights (Institut del Teatre), Brazilian Portuguese rights (Peixoto), Netherlands (Meulenhoff), Denmark (Niels Bings Forlag), Sweden (Bo Cafevors), Norway (Gyldendal Norsk), Finnland (Otava), Korea (Sung Kyun Kwan UP), Slovakia (Slovenske Krasnej Literatury), Hungary (Hollo Es Tarsa)