Peter Handke’s Controversial One-man Crusade for the Serbian Cause

The Austrian writer Peter Handke, who was nominated for the Nobel Prize in 2005, which was finally awarded to Elfriede Jelinek, was born in the bilingual village of Griffen/Grebing in Carinthia near the border with Slovenia and Italy. In my talk I am going to explore Handke's war novels in the context of his personal involvement with Serbian culture and politics. His controversial political engagement for the Serbs, which casts a sharp shadow over his literary reputation, can be tracked to Handke's origins.