Repetition: Peter Handke

Set in 1960, Nobel Prize winner Peter Handke's Repetition tells of Filip Kobal's journey from his home in Carinthia to Slovenia on the trail of his brother Gregor, who disappeared in the region after deserting from the German army and perhaps joining the Partisans. He takes with him two books that had belonged to Gregor: a copybook from agricultural college, which mainly concerns the care and grafting of fruit trees, and a Slovene–German dictionary, in which Gregor has marked certain words. The resulting investigation of the laws of language and naming becomes a transformative investigation of himself and the world around him. “No review can possibly convey the richness of Filip’s meditation on his brother’s two books, or Handke’s magical way with images. His narrative … is one of the most moving evocations I have ever read of what it means to be alive, to walk upon this earth." —Gabriel Josipovici, The Guardian “In Repetition, Handke allows the peculiar light which illuminates the space under a leafy canopy or a tent canvas to glisten  between words, placed here with astounding  caution and precision; in doing so, he succeeds in making the text into a sort of  refuge amid the arid lands which, even in the culture industry, grow larger day by day.” —W. G. Sebald