The Fruit Thief

A major new novel from the Nobel laureate Peter Handke¿one of his most inventive and dazzlingly original works

On a summer day under a blue sky a man is stung on his foot by a bee. ¿The sting signaled that the time had come to set out, to hit the road. Off with you. The hour of departure has arrived.¿ The man boards a train to Paris, crosses the city by M¿o, then boards another, disembarking in a small town on the plains to the north. He is searching for a young woman he calls the Fruit Thief, who, like him, has set off on a journey to the Vexin plateau. What follows is a vivid but dreamlike exploration of topography both physical and affective, charting the Fruit Thief¿s perambulations across France¿s internal borderlands: alongside rivers and through ravines, beside highways and to a bolt-hole under the stairs of an empty hotel. Chance encounters¿with a man scrambling through the underbrush in search of his lost cat, and with a delivery boy who abandons his scooter t