Crossing the Sierra de Gredos

Crossing the Sierra de Gredos (German: Der Bildverlust oder Durch die Sierra de Gredos) is a 2002 novel by the Austrian writer Peter Handke. It tells the story of a successful female banker who makes a journey through the Sierra de Gredos mountain range in Spain to meet a famous author in La Mancha who will write her biography. On the way she makes stops where she is confronted with the unheroic and commercialised world she wishes to escape.

Crossing the Sierra de Gredos
Cover of the first edition
AuthorPeter Handke
Original titleDer Bildverlust oder Durch die Sierra de Gredos
TranslatorKrishna Winston
CountryGermany
LanguageGerman
PublisherSuhrkamp Verlag
Publication date
15 January 2002
Published in English
10 July 2007
Pages760
ISBN978-3-518-41310-4

Publication

The book was published through Suhrkamp Verlag on 15 January 2002.[1] An English translation by Krishna Winston was published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux on 17 July 2007.[2]

Reception

In the San Francisco Chronicle, Christopher Byrd wrote: "Handke's aesthetic agenda in Crossing the Sierra de Gredos is unmistakable. It's executed by a form of philosophically inspired writing that leans less on existentialism, the go-to mode for many cerebral writers in the past, than on deconstruction. By zeroing in on the many things adventure stories leave out - for instance, the quality of the soil that the hero treads underfoot - Handke subverts the genre, so as to unmask our complacency with cliches."[3] Kirkus Reviews wrote: "This newest fiction shows [Handke] at his best and worst. ... 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."[4] Guy Vanderhaeghe of The Washington Post called the book "a beautifully hallucinatory, eerily compelling novel".[5]

References
  1. "Der Bildverlust oder Durch die Sierra de Gredos" (in German). Suhrkamp Verlag. Retrieved 2017-05-17.
  2. "Crossing the Sierra de Gredos". Farrar, Straus and Giroux. Retrieved 2017-05-17.
  3. Byrd, Christopher (2007-08-05). "Handke deconstructs the travels of a mysterious bank president". San Francisco Chronicle. Retrieved 2017-05-17.
  4. "Crossing the Sierra de Gredos by Peter Handke". Kirkus Reviews. 2007-05-01. Retrieved 2017-05-17.
  5. Vanderhaeghe, Guy (2007-07-29). "The Woman of La Mancha". The Washington Post. Retrieved 2017-05-17.
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