Once Again for Thucydides by Peter Handke (1995)

This is a volume of essays which are musings based on travel. Handke has the German knack of keeping to facts without making them boring. This is a harder thing to do than that simple statement might imply - these pieces have the feeling of a quiet man looking at things with wide eyes and trying to find the centre of them. Admittedly, this sometimes works and sometimes doesn't. There are a few of these pieces which feel a little nowhere, as if the fire in one's mind doesn't quite catch. And there are some which are strangely good. So as not to give a false impression, it must be said that these pieces rarely reach poetry; they are not histrionic in any sense. They have the feel of being a dissection without the pointy nastiness. The German author who comes to mind as a comparison is Wolfgang Borchert - the quiet echo and sense of simplicity in his short stories finds a modern answer here. These essays are in a sense catalogues of facts, but presented with the interest inherent in the facts, and delicately put, and very carefully placed in space and time. Reading up on Handke, I find that he has been regarded as the enfant terrible of German literature - this is my first exposure, and I find that hard to believe. Further reading, which I am encouraged to by the reading of this, will no doubt elucidate......