Short Letter, Long Farewell (Revised Ed.)

1973 Georg Büchner Prize
1987 Vilenica International Literary Prize
2000 Brothers Karić Award
2002 America Award
2002 Honorary doctor, University of Klagenfurt
2003 Honorary doctor, University of Salzburg
2008 Thomas-Mann-Preis
2009 Franz Kafka Prize
2012 Mülheimer Dramatikerpreis
2014 International Ibsen Award
2018 Nestroy Theatre Prize‎ for Lifetime Achievement
2019 Nobel Prize in Literature

Peter Handke was born in Griffen, Austria, in 1942. He came to early prominence in the 1960s for such experimental plays as Kaspar and rapidly established himself as one of the most respected German-language writers of his generation, producing fiction, translations, memoirs, screenplays, and essays. Among his best-known novels are The Goalie’s Anxiety at the Penalty Kick, Repetition, and My Year in the No-Man’s Bay. He has directed adaptions of his novels The Left-Handed Woman and Absence and collaborated with filmmaker Wim Wenders on four films, including Wings of Desire. In addition to Short Letter, Long Farewell, NYRB Classics has also published Handke’s novel Slow Homecoming and his memoir A Sorrow Beyond Dreams.



Greil Marcus is the author of The Shape of Things to Come: Prophecy and the American Voice, Lipstick Traces, and other books; with Werner Sollors he is the editor of A New Literary History of America, forthcoming in 2009. In recent years he has taught at the University of California at Berkeley, Princeton University, the New School University, and the University of Minnesota. He was born in San Francisco and lives in Berkeley.



Ralph Manheim (1907–1992) translated Günter Grass, Louis-Ferdinand Céline, Hermann Hesse, and Martin Heidegger, along with many other German and French authors.