SOURCE: A review of In einer dunklen Nacht ging ich aus meinem stillen Haus, in World Literature Today, Vol. 72, No. 1, Winter, 1998, pp. 123-4.

In the following review, Skwara offers a positive assessment of In einer dunklen Nacht ging ich aus meinem stillen Haus.

Each one of Peter Handke's books—or so it seems in retrospect—has taught its readers a lesson. Where the author’s youthful works contained lessons in a daredevil kind of genius, extending and jumping limits and borders of language, content and style, his later books offered firm proof of the possibility for renewal and transformation. Now, with his latest novel [In einer dunklen Nacht ging ich aus meinem stillen Haus], Handke seems to be teaching his readership how to take wing and fly.

The recent completion of a thousand-page novel, Mein Jahr in der Niemandsbucht (1995; see WLT 69:3, p. 572) would leave any other author in...