SOURCE: “New Prose: Meditative Fiction,” in Peter Handke, Twayne, 1993, pp. 121-41.

In the following essay, Firda provides an overview of the major themes, narrative presentation, and artistic concerns in Der Chinese des Schmerzes, Die Wiederholung, Nachmittag eines Schriftstellers, and Die Abwesenheit.

Andreas Loser, the symbolic narrator-protagonist of Handke's 1983 novel Der Chinese des Schmerzes (Across) is a brooding, mediative teacher of classical languages at a school in the suburbs of Salzburg.¹ Loser, as his name connotes in English translation, is an outsider and loner, a type familiar to readers of Angst and Stunde. Loser is also an amateur archeologist who spends his spare time uncovering historical and cultural artifacts. His specialty is finding thresholds of houses, churches, and temples in the vicinity of the city. He writes an occasional scholarly article on his researches for the Salzburg Yearbook for Regional Studies. Early in the text Loser explains that his...