A major new novel from the Nobel laureate Peter Handkeone of his most inventive and dazzlingly original worksOn a summer day under a blue sky a man is stung on his foot by a bee. The sting signaled that the time had come to set out, to hit the road. Off with you. The hour of departure has arrived. The man boards a train to Paris, crosses the city by Mtro, then boards another, disembarking in a small town on the plains to the north. He is searching for a young woman he calls the Fruit Thief, who, like him, has set off on a journey to the Vexin plateau. What follows is a vivid but dreamlike exploration of topography both physical and affective, charting the Fruit Thiefs perambulations across Frances internal borderlands alongside rivers and through ravines, beside highways and to a bolthole under the stairs of an empty hotel. Chance encounterswith a man scrambling through the underbrush in search of his lost cat, and with a delivery boy who abandons his scooter to become a fellow traveler for a dayare like so many throws of the dice, each exposing new facets of this mysterious individual in the manner of a cubist portrait.In prose of unrivaled precision, lucidly rendered into English by Krishna Winston, The Fruit Thief elevates the terrain of everyday life to epic status, and situates the microgeography of an individual at the center of a book like few others. This is one of Nobel laureate Peter Handkes most significant and original achievements.

Binding: Hardback;336 pages; Publisher: Farrar, Straus & Giroux Inc; Classification: FA; Weight: 564 g; Dimensions: 145 x 217 x 33

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