The Goalie's Anxiety at the Penalty Kick

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's "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). "