Once Again for Thucydides Book

"Once Again for Thucydides" is a collection of twelve short journals Peter Handke wrote on trips around the world, from the Balkans to the Pyrenees, from Salzburg to the sea of Hakkaido in Japan. In each journal, Handke concentrates on small things he observes, trying to capture their essence, their "simple, unadorned validity." What results is a word of remarkable precision, in which he uncovers the general appearance of such random things as a tree, a shoeshine man, a boat loading on a pier, and discovers their inner workings and mystery. Always, his writing hints at the unknown. Describing the snow melting in a garden or falling during an inland train ride through Japan, the glowworms illuminating the plains in Friuli, the tidal waters flowing and receding off the Atlantic coast of Spain, these amazing little "epics" reveal a narrator obsessed with the wonders of detail and marveling, as are we, at the scope and variety of the natural world. In the words of German writer Gerhard Meier, "Once Again for Thucydides" ends up being "a courageous and defiantly independent book."