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

Two novellas by Peter Handke--his first works to be published since he won the 2019 Nobel Prize in Literature.

The Second Sword and My Day in the Other Land are two 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 self-examination: Will the narrator’s journey end in him throwing down the gauntlet?

My Day in the Other Land is the first work written by Handke 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.

Peter Handke was born in Griffen, Austria, in 1942. His many novels include The Goalie’s Anxiety at the Penalty Kick, A Sorrow Beyond Dreams, and The Fruit Thief, all published by FSG. Handke is the recipient of many literary awards, including the Georg Büchner and Franz Kafka Prizes; in 2019, he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature ＂for an influential work that with linguistic ingenuity has explored the periphery and the specificity of human experience.＂ He lives outside Paris.

Krishna Winston is a professor emerita of German literature and environmental studies at Wesleyan University. She has been translating the work of Peter Handke since 1993. Her many other translations include works by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Günter Grass, Christoph Hein, and Werner Herzog. She lives in Connecticut.