Peter Handke

Peter Handke was born in 1942 in Carinthia, Austria. His mother was of Slovenian descent, and his father was a German soldier. He studied law in Graz but discontinued his studies in 1966 when he published his first novel titled "The Hornets." In the same year, his legendary play "Offending the Audience" was staged in Frankfurt, directed by Claus Peymann. A prolific writer, Handke has since published dozens of novels, novellas, and plays, and is now regarded as one of the classic modernists of the 20th century. He also translated foreign authors into German, including tragedies by Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides. His ambition was to create a contemporary epic writing style that would liberate reality from conventional patterns of perception. He has been honored with numerous international awards. He opposed the dissolution of the former Yugoslavia and particularly the exclusive blaming of the Serbs for the war. For his work, he received the Büchner Prize (1973) and the Kafka Prize (1979). 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," according to the Swedish Academy's announcement. Since 1991, he has lived in Chaville, France, near Paris