Crossing the Sierra de Gredos

"It would be folly to suppose that Crossing the Sierra De Gredos is anything less than a work of art . . . A stupendously capable writer . . . Handke is a writer who cannot be brusquely dismissed."—Christopher Byrd, San Francisco Chronicle

"One of the most emotionally rewarding and intellectually demanding novels of the year."—Thomas McGonigle, Los Angeles Times

"Peter Handke's Crossing the Sierra De Gredos, set in an unspecified time in the 21st century, is a beautifully hallucinatory, eerily compelling novel . . . Mile by mile, glittering bit by glittering bit, Handke creates a brilliant mosaic that justifies the ecstatic affirmation with which he concludes his novel, an affirmation that bears comparison with Molly Bloom's in Ulysses. Great writers teach us to read anew. Perhaps Handke is one of them."—Guy Vanderhaeghe, The Washington Post

"Handke has been publishing fiction since 1965 and is widely considered one of the greatest contemporary writers in the German language . . . Intellectually provocative."—Charles Oberndorf, The Plain Dealer (Cleveland)

"The artistry of Peter Handke's language may well be unsurpassed among contemporary writers in German. His prose is at once serpentine and spare, dreamlike and exacting. In his latest novel translated into English, Crossing the Sierra de Gredos, the Austrian author richly demonstrates his literary gifts, and the translator, Krishna Winston, sensitively renders the mesmerizing beauty of his style. In this book, as in much of Handke's previous work, the most stirring passages disclose the inherent strangeness of the world."—Ross Benjamin, Bookforum

"Handke's innovative plays and meditative novels have made him a perennial Nobel candidate . . . This newest fiction shows him at his best . . . The result is a work that embraces a disciplined attempt to acknowledge and celebrate the matter of everyday life (before it vanishes forever?), and a species of literate wool-gathering which seems to confirm Handke's frequently reiterated assertion that all that exists is grist for the artist's mill . . . Nobody writing today surpasses Peter Handke at trying to make sense of it all."—Kirkus Reviews

"A wealthy financial savant living in an unnamed river-port city commissions a successful literary author to write her biography—or to create it for her. However, before it can be written, she must travel by plane, automobile, and foot to meet the mysterious writer somewhere in La Mancha. Thus begins her odyssey and perhaps her most important accomplishment yet, causing us to question throughout whether this novel itself is her biography . . . There is definite originality and the occasional humorous passage . . . This whimsical style is good for minute detail, at which Handke excels . . . important for major literature collections and a refreshing break from recent cookie-cutter literary fiction."—Stephen Morrow, Library Journal