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The Goalie's Anxiety at the Penalty Kick book cover
The Goalie's Anxiety at the Penalty Kick
1970
First Published
3.17
Average Rating
133
Number of Pages
The first of Peter Handke's novels to be published in English, The Goalie's Anxiety at the Penalty Kick is a true modern classic that "portrays the breakdown of a murderer in ways that recall Camus' The Stranger" (Richard Locke, The New York Times). The self-destruction of a soccer goalie turned construction worker who wanders aimlessly around a stifling Austrian border town after pursuing and then murdering, almost unthinkingly, a female movie cashier is mirrored by his use of direct, sometimes fractured prose that conveys "at its best a seamless blend of lyricism and horror seen in the runes of a disintegrating world" (Bill Marx, Boston Sunday Globe).
Avg Rating
3.17
Number of Ratings
5,619
5 STARS
12%
4 STARS
27%
3 STARS
35%
2 STARS
18%
1 STARS
8%
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Author

Peter Handke
Peter Handke
Author · 46 books

Peter Handke (* 6. Dezember 1942 in Griffen, Kärnten) ist ein österreichischer Schriftsteller und Übersetzer. Peter Handke is an Avant-garde Austrian novelist and playwright. His body of work has been awarded numerous literary prizes, including the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2019. He has also collaborated with German director Wim Wenders, writing the script for The Wrong Move and co-writing the screenplay for Wings of Desire.

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