Summary
Peter Handke: My day in another country - a story about demons
In the country, it was said that this fruit grower was possessed by "not just one, but various, many, even countless demons". During the day, he walks around the village, speaks quietly in an indistinct language, sometimes roars and frightens the villagers with his insults, tirades and prophecies. He spends his nights in a tent next to the cemetery. Only his sister takes care of him, his parents are long gone. She watches him talk to the animals and can't believe that an angelic song is coming out of his throat. That day, his sister followed him to the lake on the opposite shore, which is another country. Several men were pulling out a fishing boat, one of them was looking at it as if "no one had ever looked at it" - and immediately the demons came out of it. "Thus I freed myself of my demons... headed to another land on the other side of the lake."
Peter Handke writes a story about poetic transformation, about freeing the center of human nature, that "ineradicable resistance", without which there is nothing but "eternal soulless being".
"A small format masterpiece."
– Die Presse
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