Peter Handke

Peter Handke was born on 6 December 1942 at Griffen (Carinthia). His mother's family belonged to Austria's Slovenian minority. After passing his Abitur (university entrance qualification) in 1961, Handke studied law at Graz. His first novel, The Hornets, appeared in 1966, by which time he had abandoned his studies. A little later that same year, his play Offending the Audience was premiered at the Theater am Turm in Frankfurt in a production directed by Claus Peymann.
This was followed over the next few decades by a succession of significant premieres: Kaspar (1968), The Ride across Lake Constance (1971), The Art of Asking (1988), The Hour We Knew Nothing of Each Other (1992), Underground Blues (2002) and Still Storm (2011), as well as more than 30 fiction and prose works such as The Goalkeeper's Fear of the Penalty Kick (1969), The Left-Handed Woman (1976), The Chinaman of Pain (1983), The Repetition (1986) and My Year in No-Man's Bay (2004).
Apart from his work as a writer of fiction and drama, Peter Handke is a translator of Classical Greek works (Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides), and French and American authors (René Char, Francis Ponge, Walker Percy).

He received the Nestroy Theatre Prize for Still Storm (2011).

Prizes and awards (selection):

• 1967: Gerhart Hauptmann Award
• 1972: Literature Prize of the Province of Styria
• 1973: Schiller Prize of the City of Mannheim
• 1973: Georg Büchner Prize (prize money returned in 1999)
• 1979: Prize of the Guild of German Film Theatres
• 1979: Klosterneuburg Franz Kafka Prize (half of prize money passed on to Gerhard Meier)
• 1983: Cultural Prize of the Province of Carinthia
• 1983: Franz Grillparzer Prize
• 1985: Anton Wildgans Prize (refused)
• 1986: Literature Prize of the Cultural Fund of the City of Salzburg
• 1987: Grand Austrian State Prize for Literature
• 1988: Bremen Literature Prize 1991: Franz Grillparzer Prize
• 1995: Schiller Memorial Prize
• 2004: Siegfried Unseld Prize
• 2006: Nomination for the Heinrich Heine Prize of the City of Düsseldorf on 20 May 2006: when three of the party groups on the City Council refused to endorse the jury's decision (30 May 2006), Handke declared he did not wish to accept the prize (2 June 2006).
• 2007: Berlin Heinrich Heine Prize, an award established at the initiative of the Berliner Ensemble in response to Düsseldorf City Council's decision: Handke expressed his gratitude for their efforts, but did not accept the award and donated the prize money to an enclave in Kosovo.
• 2008: Thomas Mann Literature Prize of the Bavarian Academy of Fine Arts (prize money donated to the Academy)
• 2009: Franz Kafka Literature Prize of the City of Prague
• 2011: Nestroy Theatre Prize for Still Storm – Salzburg Festival/Thalia Theater Hamburg (category: Best Play – Authors' Prize)