A Sorrow Beyond Dreams
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''A Sorrow Beyond Dreams'' (german: Wunschloses Unglück) is a 1972 semi-autobiographical novella by the Austrian writer
Peter Handke Peter Handke (; born 6 December 1942) is an Austrian novelist, playwright, translator, poet, film director, and screenwriter. He was awarded the 2019 Nobel Prize in Literature "for an influential work that with linguistic ingenuity has explored t ...
. It describes the life of Handke's mother Maria, who committed suicide on 19th November 1971.


Reception

Thomas Curwen of the ''
Los Angeles Times The ''Los Angeles Times'' (abbreviated as ''LA Times'') is a daily newspaper that started publishing in Los Angeles in 1881. Based in the LA-adjacent suburb of El Segundo since 2018, it is the sixth-largest newspaper by circulation in the U ...
'' wrote in 2003: "Mental illness is a phrase you won't find in Handke's account of his mother's death, yet it surely waits in the wings. ... While the pleasure, if this is the word, of reading Handke comes from the existential assumptions of his story, it is important to realize that suicide -- the reality, as opposed to the idea (which Camus seemed to savor) -- is not an existential dilemma. It is the final, tragic outcome of a psychiatric illness. Yet how prepared are we for this knowledge?" Karl Ove Knausgård described the novella as one of the “most important books written in German in our time”.


See also

*
1972 in literature This article contains information about the literary events and publications of 1972. Events *May 22 – Cecil Day-Lewis, Poet Laureate of the United Kingdom, dies at Lemmons, the home of novelists Kingsley Amis and Elizabeth Jane Howard in No ...
*
Austrian literature Austrian literature () is mostly written in German, and is closely connected with German literature. Origin and background From the 19th century onward, Austria was the home of novelists and short-story writers, including Adalbert Stifter, ...


References

1972 novels Austrian autobiographical novels German-language novels Novels by Peter Handke Fiction about suicide {{1970s-autobio-novel-stub