The Goalkeeper's Anxiety at the Penalty Kick
by Peter Handke
Award History
| Award | Year | Status |
|---|---|---|
| Nobel Prize in Literature | 2019 | Winner |
About This Book
Josef Bloch, a former goalkeeper, wanders through Vienna after being fired from a construction job, eventually committing an inexplicable murder. As he travels to a border village, reality becomes increasingly unstable. Handke's celebrated novella, originally published in 1970, is a key text of European literary modernism.
About the Author
Peter Handke is an Austrian novelist, playwright, translator, and screenwriter born on December 6, 1942, in Griffen, Austria, of mixed Carinthian Slovene and German descent. He rose to prominence in the late 1960s as a key figure in the German-language avant-garde, abandoning law studies at the University of Graz in 1965 to pursue writing. He gained international fame with experimental plays such as Offending the Audience (1966) and Kaspar (1967), which challenged theatrical conventions and social conformity. Read more →
