The Goalkeeper's Anxiety at the Penalty Kick

One of 2019 Nobel Laureate for Literature's most important works, a spare and haunting novel of alienation.

WINNER OF THE NOBEL PRIZE FOR LITERATURE

'Portrays the breakdown of a murderer in ways that recall Camus' The Stranger' The New York Times

Joseph Bloch, a once-famous goalkeeper turned construction worker, commits a random murder without thought or regret. As he wanders the streets, from hotel to bar, cinema to tram stop, experiencing strange and violent encounters on the way, he finds himself, and everything around him, disintegrating. Told in spare and icy prose, Peter Handke's masterpiece of alienation takes apart our ideas of humanity and reality itself.

'A Kafkaesque crime novel' Los Angeles Times

Translated by Michael Roloff