A Moment of True Feeling
A Novel
ISBN10: 1250767318
ISBN13: 9781250767318
Trade Paperback
144 Pages
$16.00
CA$22.00
Gregor Keuschnig awakens from a nightmare in which he has committed murder, and announces, "From today on, I shall be leading a double life."
The duplicity, however, lies only in Keuschnig's mind; his everyday life as the press attache for the Austrian Embassy in Paris continues much as before: routine paperwork, walks in the city, futile intimacies with his family and his mistress. But Keuschnig is oblivious to it all, merely simulating his previous identity while he searches for a higher significance, a mystical moment of true sensation which can free him from what the novel calls life's "dreadful normalcy." Convinced that, if he fails, life's meaning will be revealed to him only when it is too late, he looks for portents everywhere.
Keuschnig's search takes him through all of Paris. At every step, his feelings are interwoven with acute observation of its streets, buildings, cafes, parks, sky. It is an intimate and evocative journey, in a city that is at once supportive and familiar, strange and provocative.
Reviews
Praise for A Moment of True Feeling
"Existential angst figured prominently in Handke's two previous translated novels (The Goalie's Anxiety at the Penalty Kick; Short Letter, Long Farewell), but here it doesn't figure . . . graduates of Sartre's Nausea will feel queasy with déjà vu."—Kirkus Reviews
Reviews from Goodreads
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A Moment of True Feeling
Who has ever dreamed that he has become a murderer and from then on has only been carrying on with his usual life for the sake of appearances? At that time, which is still going on, Gregor Keuschnig...