Supervisor Elham AbolFateh
Editor in Chief Mohamed Wadie

Nobel Winner"Handke" at CIBF51 in Arabic


Wed 08 Jan 2020 | 07:47 AM
Nour El-Hoda Fouad

Al-Arabi for Publishing and Distributing has announced that an Arabic version of the novel “A Sorrow Beyond Dreams”, that written by novelist Peter Handke, winner of the 2019 Nobel literature prize, and translated by Heba Sharif.

The novel will be released at the 51st edition of the Cairo International Book Fair (CIBF), it is a semi-autobiographical novel that was released in 1972 and is based on his mother's suicide.

It covers her time as a little girl living in the countryside under her father's control, to her time as a mature woman who immigrated to the city to enjoy her freedom, which is a novelty for her.

The novel also reveals how she was a woman with a strong personality, but at the end of her days she begins to collapse, and how she wrote to her son in an attempt to try to find a way to return to who she was.

The announcement comes after Al-Arabi obtained the copyright for four of Handke's works after communicating with his Austrian publishing house, Penguin Random House. These works also include, "The Weight of the World",” On a Dark Night I Left My Silent House ", and “Slow homecoming ", which is all are due to be released in the spring.

CIBF's upcoming edition will take place from January 22nd – February 4th.

It is noteworthy that Handke is an Austrian novelist and playwright. He was born on December 6, 1942. Handke has won many literary awards, including the Gerhart Hauptmann Award, Literature Prize of the Province of Styria, Schiller Prize of the City of Mannheim, Siegfried Unseld Prize, and Franz Kafka Literature Prize of the City of Prague.

The Austrian novelist is best known for writing play “Offending the Audience”, novel “The Goalie's Anxiety at the Penalty Kick”, and novel “A Sorrow Beyond Dreams”. Contributed by Yara Sameh