Peter Handke

An Austrian writer looks back on his failed relationships, from his tenuous connection to his son to an abortive love affair with a onetime Miss Yugoslavia, struggling to do justice to their complexity in his next novel.

Peter Handke's mother was an invisible woman. Throughout her life—which spanned the Nazi era, the war, and the postwar consumer economy—she struggled to maintain appearances, only to arrive at a terrible recognition: "I'm not human any more." Not long after, she killed herself with an overdose of sleeping pills.In A …