A Sorrow Beyond Dreams

Peter Handke was born in Griffen, Austria, in 1942. He came to early prominence in the 1960s for such experimental plays as Kaspar and rapidly established himself as one of the most respected German-language writers of his generation, producing fiction, translations, memoirs, screenplays, and essays. Among his best-known novels are The Goalie's Anxiety at the Penalty Kick, Repetition, and My Year in the No-Man's Bay. He has directed adaptions of his novels The Left-Handed Woman and Absence and collaborated with filmmaker Wim Wenders on four films, including Wings of Desire. In addition to Short Letter, Long Farewell, NYRB Classics has also published Handke's novel Slow Homecoming and his memoir A Sorrow Beyond Dreams. »

Ralph Manheim (1907-1992) translated more than one hundred books, primarily from German and French. His first major commision was Mein Kampf, which was published in the United States in 1943. Among his prizewinning translations are The Tin Drum by Günter Grass, Castle to Castle by Louis-Ferdinand Céline, and A Sorrow Beyond Dreams by Peter Handke. After his death, the PEN/Ralph Manheim Medal for lifetime acheivement in translation—which he won in 1988—was renamed in his memory. »

Jeffrey Eugenides grew up in Grosse Pointe, Michigan, and attended Brown University. He is the author of two novels, The Virgin Suicides and Middlesex. He lives in Berlin, Germany, with his wife. »

By Peter Handke
Translated from the German by Ralph Manheim
Introduction by Jeffrey Eugenides

Peter Handke's mother was an invisible woman. Throughout her life—which spanned the Nazi era, the war, and the postwar consumer economy—she struggled to maintain appearances, only to arrive at a terrible recognition: "I'm not human any more." Not long after, she killed herself with an overdose of sleeping pills.

In A Sorrow Beyond Dreams her son sits down to record what he knows, or thinks he knows, about his mother's life and death before, in his words, "the dull speechlessness—the extreme speechlessness" of grief takes hold forever. And yet the experience of speechlessness, as it marks both suffering and love, lies at the heart of Handke's brief but unforgettable elegy. This austere, scrupulous, and deeply moving book is one of the finest achievements of a great contemporary writer.

Read the introduction (PDF)

Reviews

Among Handke's early books, A Sorrow Beyond Dreams—a brittle remembrance of his working class mother—remains indispensable.
— Boston Globe

A Sorrow Beyond Dreams is Handke's masterpiece, a short, concentrated, mysteriously exhaustive portrait of his mother, from whom history and circumstance have removed most traces of an identity.
— J. S. Marcus

In A Sorrow Beyond Dreams, the author confronts his mother's suicide in a compelling story that is like an explanation of a recurrent dream, a dream so vividly expressed it becomes our dream.
— Chicago Sun-Times

Also see:

Short Letter, Long Farewell
By Peter Handke
Translated from the German by Ralph Manheim
Introduction by Greil Marcus

American myth and American reality come to a head in Handke's spare and dreamlike 1972 novel, in which a young Austrian alternately pursues and flees his ex-wife, culminating in a Hollywood ending.

Slow Homecoming
By Peter Handke
Translated from the German by Ralph Manheim
Introduction by Benjamin Kunkel

A trilogy in which Handke, putting aside the nerve-racked style of his early work for a new simplicity, meditates on exile, art, and the nature of the bonds between parent and child.

Format: Paperback
Retail Price: $12.95
Price: $9.71 (25% off)

Nov 30, 2002
96 pages
ISBN: 1590170199
9781590170199
Biography & Memoir
NYRB Classics
Essays & Criticism
Literature in German

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