The Moravian Night by Peter Handke
In The Moravian Night, a former writer invites acquaintances to his houseboat anchored on the Morava river near the Balkan village of Porodin, a locale described as “one of the last enclaves in Europe.” With the accompaniment of a “frog chorus” singing from nearby reed beds, and the assistance of a surprise guest—an “unknown woman” who later becomes integral to the story—the ex-author recounts his travels in the Balkans, Spain, Germany, and Austria.
Peter Handke is an acclaimed and prolific author of novels, plays, essays, and poems. A cultural icon of postwar Germany and Austria, he garnered an early reputation as a provocateur with works like Offending the Audience (1966) and Self-Accusation (1966). Handke was internationally acclaimed as a gifted prose stylist, with ruminative, extended sentences that had what John Updike called a “knifelike clarity of evocation.” Later in his career, Handke became embroiled in controversy as he became an outspoken supporter of Serbia during the Yugoslav wars, downplayed the fact that Serbian paramilitaries
