The Second Sword

A May Story

Rights sold to:

English world rights (FSG), Spanish world rights (Alianza), Catalan rights (Alianza), Chinese simplex rights (Horizon), Chinese complex rights (Ecus), Russia (Eksmo), Brazilian Portuguese rights (Estação Liberdade), Portuguese rights (Relógio D’Água), France (Gallimard), Italy (Guanda), Netherlands (Wereldbibliotheek), Denmark (Batzer), Norway (Pelikanen), Poland (Eperons-Ostrogi), Romania (ART), Serbia (Laguna), Greece (Hestia), Armenia (Antares)

Fiction

Peter Handke

The Second Sword / Das zweite Schwert

A May Story

Returning to the area southwest of Paris after years of being on the road, three days later the hero was forced to set out again. In contrast to previous explorations of the world, this time he has an irrefutable goal: »›This is the face of an avenger!‹ I said to myself when I looked in the mirror the morning I set off on my journey.« Revenge? For what?

For the mother denounced in a newspaper article as a supporter of her country's annexation to Germany. Against whom? A...

For the mother denounced in a newspaper article as a supporter of her country's annexation to Germany. Against whom? A journalist, the author of those untruthful allegations, who lives within a day's drive, out in the hills around Paris. However, the experiences of all those travellers Peter Handke has had set off from home are also confirmed here: »I hadn't come up with a plan. It had to happen. On the other hand: It did, in fact, exist, the plan. But it wasn’t my own.«

And so the revenge campaign becomes a celebration thanks to a conscious decision on the part of the narrator, Peter Handke: Only that which has existed in real life is allowed access to the written story. And vice versa: A story only becomes real if it is worth telling.

»It’s not The Second Sword that is made of steel but the narration itself. A pious legend? Maybe. But a victory of literature.« Lothar Müller, Süddeutsche Zeitung

»This book is Handke’s perfidious revenge on his critics, that’s the way one wants to and should read it today – and at the same time it is a feast for his admirers. A double-edged sword.« Philipp Haibach, Die literarische Welt

»The book masterfully entangles the elevated and the farcical, real anger with parody, apodictic speech with particles of everyday language. The May Story is a spring-like easy read but is yet a ›serious game‹ in the style of the old masters.« Thomas E. Schmidt, DIE ZEIT

»[…] he maintains the suspense in The Second Sword until the end. Is the narrator going to take revenge on the journalist? It’s a literary game – not just with what happens in the book but also with the knowledge of his own reputation.« Sebastian Hammelehle, Der Spiegel

»The seemingly militant title The Second Sword is entirely taken up in literature […] and Handke’s epic aligns itself with Homer’s epics with dream-like ease. […] In the echo chamber of the classic epics the boundary between narration and religion has been lifted for Handke. This must not be understood as a theological conviction but as an expression of all that literature encompasses.« Helmut Böttiger, Deutschlandfunk Kultur

»Handke‘s May Story, a literarily perfect, astonishingly irritating text of self-exploration [...]« Ulrich Kühn, NDR Kultur

»The May Story is teeming with references to so much of what Handke has written over the course of his long career […] Handke toys with his work, often light-footed, then profound when he is dealing with big themes […].« Mladen Gladic, der Freitag

»Handke casually plays all the cards he has hidden up his sleeve. Where the story first seems like it is strung together almost incidentally, it grows into a complex structure. And in between Handke winks at us. His hero is never unlikeable, because he is never murderous. […] This keeps the story of revenge in a state of ease that counteracts it and in a cheerful balance.« Michael Wurmitzer, der Standard

»Peter Handke‘s new book shows him as a giant of the art of narration. […] [He creates] a kind of prose that is not subject to an expiration date any time soon and should still captivate readers in 100 years‘ time.« Ulf Heise, MDR

»How everything comes to a conclusion in the end, finds each other as though a matter of course, moves the reader. The others are beyond help anyway. Are they going to keep silent at least? It stands to reason that they won’t.« Lothar Struck, Glanz&Elend

»The Second Sword fits into [Peter Handke’s] narrative cosmos like a splendidly shimmering mosaic piece.« Werner Krause, Kleine Zeitung

2020, 160 pages

Service

Downloads

Cover (Web)Cover (Print)

Fiction

Peter Handke

Author

Peter Handke, born in 1942 in Griffen, Austria, lives near Paris. His books have been translated into more than 40 languages. In 2019, he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature.

Peter Handke

Author

Peter Handke, born in 1942 in Griffen, Austria, lives near Paris. His books have been translated into more than 40 languages. In 2019, he was...

OTHER PUBLICATIONS

Year of Publication: 2025

Peter HandkeYear of Publication: 2025

Snows of Yesteryear, Snows of Tomorrow

As he walks, he gathers together the things he encounters, day by day, step by step: two crows at his feet, an apple with a bite taken out of it from the side of the trail, a swarm of flies “flying...

Rights sold to:

Sweden (Faethon), Bulgaria (Black Flamingo), Turkey (Everest), Greece (Vakxikon)

Year of Publication: 2023

Peter HandkeYear of Publication: 2023

The Ballad of the Last Guest

Gregor returns home from another continent. The landscape, formerly characterised by its many villages, has become an urban agglomeration, both familiar and foreign at the same time. His family...

Rights sold to:

English world rights (FSG), Spanish world rights and Catalan (Alianza), France (Gallimard), Italy (Guanda), Sweden (Faethon), Turkey (Sia Kitap), Greece (Hestia)

Year of Publication: 2022

Peter HandkeYear of Publication: 2022

The Time and The Spaces

Since the early seventies, Peter Handke has filled thousands of pages in notebooks. The slim books, which have to fit in every shirt and jacket pocket, are indispensable companions on every journey. They are used to record ideas for literary projects, but, most importantly, things that Handke has seen, read and heard. »I practised reacting to everything that happened to me immediately...

Year of Publication: 2022

Peter HandkeYear of Publication: 2022

Zwiegespräch

One of them still remembers that visit to the theatre as a child: not the play, but the décor, the scenery. Archetypes that he recognises on his walks through the neighbouring villages, in a...

Rights sold to:

Spanish world rights (Alianza), Catalan rights (Alianza), France (Gallimard), Italy (Guanda), Sweden (Faethon), Iran (Farhange Javid Publishing)

Year of Publication: 2021

My Day in the Other Country

His surroundings see him as a man possessed, »possessed not just by one, but by several, many, even countless demons«. During the day, he, a fruit grower by profession, walks through the village....

The Second Sword

Persons

Peter Handke

OTHER PUBLICATIONS

Snows of Yesteryear, Snows of Tomorrow

The Ballad of the Last Guest

The Time and The Spaces

Zwiegespräch

My Day in the Other Country

Zdeněk Adamec

The Fruit Thief or A simple Trip into the Interior

Days and Works

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

Side Entrance or Main Entrance?

Essay on the Mushroom Hunter

The Correspondence

Essay on the Quite Place

The Beautiful Days of Aranjuez

The Great Fall

Storm Still

Till Day You Do Part Or A Question of Light

The Cuckoos of Velika Hoca

The Moravian Night

Potash

The Tablas de Daimiel

Don Juan

Crossing the Sierra de Gredos

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

On a Dark Night I Left My Silent House

Summer Postscript to a Winter Journey

My Year In No Man's Bay

Essay on the Successful Day

Essay on the Jukebox

Once Again for Thucydides

Essay on Tiredness

The Afternoon of a Writer

Absence

Ode to Permanence

Repetition

Across

Walk About the Village

Child Story

The Lesson of Mont Sainte-Victoire

The Long Way Around

The Weight of the World

The Left-Handed Woman

A Moment of True Feeling

A Sorrow Beyond Dreams

Short Letter, Long Farewell

I Am an Inhabitant of the Ivory Tower

The Goalie's Anxiety at the Penalty Kick

The Ride Across Lake Constance

The Innerworld of the Outerworld of the Innerworld

Offending the Audience and Other Spoken Pieces

The Hornets

DISCOVER

Just published: Suhrkamp Authors Around the World – March 2024, issue 2

Peter Handke: 80th Birthday on December 6, 2022

Just published: Suhrkamp Authors Around the World – November 2022, issue 1