Peter Handke (born 1942) was an Austrian playwright, novelist, screenwriter, essayist, and poet.

There was little evidence very early in his life that Peter Handke would one day challenge the theatrical and literary conventions of his time. Born on December 6, 1942, in the small town of Griffen in Carinthia, Austria, Handke first dreamed of becoming a priest. He entered a Jesuit seminary while still in his teens and stayed there until 1961, when he decided to study law at the University of Graz.

Perhaps it was the haunting beauty and deep, mystical silences he experienced as a sensitive child growing up among the calm, majestical mountains and forests of the lake-studded Carinthian countryside that led to his early decision to enter the priesthood. Or perhaps it was just the nature of the young man himself, who seemed forever in search of something beyond himself and the conventional world. Years later he...