The Great Fall

This is the story of a single day in the life of an actor, a flâneur, who is walking through a big city on a warm summer’s day, from the morning until the dead of night, from the city’s outskirts to its centre.

And the face of a woman.

»From the edges of the city to its center, the narrator is wandering through areas which ever so slowly become as broad as the landscape of a world just like the old masters like Brueghel imagined it: a panorama full of sharply delineated and incredibly odd figures. What a great artistic achievement.« Die Welt

»But all of this is interwoven with a language that, like in a fairy-tale, brings together the most diverse elements into one sensation. You cannot really tell whether it is a sensation of continual fright or one of unconditional affinity to this world [...] Handke seems to have been returned to the earliest motives of his writing.« Focus

»You are advised to read this book, take a cane, tuck a feather onto your hat like the hero in The Great Fall, and to follow him […]. It is for your own good, reader, you will not regret it […]. This is a straightforward narration with plain and elegant sentences. The book is reminiscent of Handke’s beginnings, and it is impressive [...] German literature is not conceivable without Peter Handke.« Die Zeit

»[A] casual and pretty cool book rendered in an almost Homeric style.« Welt am Sonntag

»In litanies of intimate compaction accompanied by equalization in the echo chamber, in repetition that pushes forward and yet undulates on the spot, the sound of sentences echoes, booms, buzzes and swings to form a great Handke melody.« FR