The Second Sword: Two Novellas

Nobel Prize winner Handke (The Fruit Thief) offers two novellas here. In the first, the narrator arrives home after several weeks of travel but leaves shortly after to avenge an insult made to his mother years earlier. What follows is a meandering and idiosyncratic daylong journey through the outskirts of Paris. The narrator encounters neighbors, shares bottles of wine with strangers, and engages children in staring matches, all the while becoming more and more intent on vengeance. In the second novella the narrator, a fruit farmer, has a psychotic breakdown, abandons his farm, and lives in a tent in a cemetery outside of town. His sister keeps an eye on him, and the townspeople view him with equanimity. When he recovers, he travels to a war-torn land across the lake. Mythological and religious imagery abound. Both stories are presented as interior monologues and have a hallucinogenic quality. The unpleasant personalities of the narrators may require persistence on the part of readers. Handke describes grim times but still manages to end on an encouraging note.