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Josef Bloch has committed murder. He roams through villages near the border of Austria. He seems to feel nothing about what he has done. Cut off from others, he cannot make sense of their world. He builds his own set of signs and meanings instead. He uses it to feel that he exists and seem normal.

Peter Handke’s novel looks at life cut off from others. It also deals with thoughts that take hold and will not go. It asks how much words can express. Handke shows how alone Bloch is through what Bloch sees. He does not use the study of the mind to explain Bloch’s state. He keeps the focus on how Bloch reads the world.

Handke wrote both novels and plays. He won the 2019 Nobel Prize in Literature. Wim Wenders made a film of this novel in 1972. Corina Jiva translated this edition from German. It also has a preface by Victor Scoradet.