The Ballad of the Last Guest

”[Handke is] a supremely gifted writer whose existential acuteness in novels such as The Goalkeeper’s Anxiety at the Penalty Kick and Repetition can be set alongside Kafka and Camus. The Ballad of the Last Guest, expertly translated by Krishna Winston, conjures the spirit of both writers.”
–Tobias Grey, Financial Times

“The final pages of The Ballad of the Last Guest are magnificently moving … There is something ritualized about the act of homecoming in Handke. It recurs, and in recurring connects us, almost against our will, to the eternal.” –Bailey Trela, The Threepenny Review

“Perceptive … A dense and thorough exploration of one man’s grappling with change and loss … Enlightening.”
–Publishers Weekly

“The Ballad of the Last Guest feels like a love song to a world and society that is slowly vanishing … Krishna Winston’s translation beautifully re-creates the gentle rhythm of Gregor’s steps … [this] mesmerizes the reader.”
–Catherine Venner, World Literature Today

”[An] elegant mood piece … The Ballad of the Last Guest is saturated with a reflective spirit … An impressionistic novel that casts a memorable spell.”
–Shelf Awareness

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, My Year in the No-Man’s-Bay, and Crossing the Sierra de Gredos. 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.”

Krishna Winston is the Marcus L. Taft Professor of German Language and Literature at Wesleyan University. She has translated more than thirty books, including previous works by Peter Handke and works by Werner Herzog, Günter Grass, Christoph Hein, and Goethe.

This item is eligible for free returns within 30 days of delivery. See our returns policy for further details.