The two novellas of Peter Handke – "The Second Sword" and "My Day in the Other Land" are connected by the motive of a journey. In "The Second Sword," the same man who was a protagonist of another Handke's novel, "The Fruit Thief," once more decides to leave his home –as usual, he leaves the door unlocked – and travels to avenge his mother. She was wrongly denounced in a newspaper, and he is determined to punish a woman responsible for the insulting article. The journey proves to have its own merits, and, as he observes people and things around him, giving the exquisite description even to two plumes of smoke rising from a grill, the story is clearly more about a journey than the purpose.

The second novella describes a complex travel - from madness to calmness. A fruit farmer possessed by demons leaves his land and voyages to another place across the lake. This is more of a life journey, freeing him from the voices inside, allowing others to enter his mind, and even finding love. Still, there is uncertainty if the end of a trip brings permanent peace; perhaps it's just a more extended break until the demons in his head reappear.

Peter Handke's style is unique: beautiful language, the constant monologue inviting and asking a reader for confirmation or just an opinion, and taking the most minor details in, giving them their own life, as if they were suddenly brought to the surface. These beautifully translated two novellas are like poems; haunting language infuses the usual landscape and regular people with a somehow ethereal, more profound mood.

i liked how this was two separate novellas but it was wild to see such a long title when I didn't really understand it was two separate stories. i would clarify that