Criticism > Contemporary Literary Criticism > Handke, Peter (Vol. 135) - Edward Timms (review date 26 April 1996)


Handke, Peter (Vol. 135) - Edward Timms (review date 26 April 1996)

Edward Timms (review date 26 April 1996)

SOURCE: “Words and Serbs,” in Times Literary Supplement, April 26, 1996, p. 29.

[In the following review, Timms finds shortcomings in Handke's criticism of Western media coverage of the Balkan war in Eine winterliche Reise zu den Flüssen Donau, Save, Morawa und Drina.]

Peter Handke made his name in the 1960s through a critique of received ideas, deconstructing the cliché transmitted by education and the media in dazzling disquisitions like Selbstbezichtigung (Self-Indictment) and Publikumsbeschimpfung (Insulting the Audience). In his most recent book, he returns to these themes with a vengeance, focusing on the distortions arising from media coverage of the war in the former Yugoslavia. Eine winterliche Reise is an account of a journey in Serbia at the end of 1995, especially of the way the media have falsified perceptions of the war by casting the Serbs...

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