Slow Homecoming

The four works have been published both separately and in one volume in German and several other languages. In English translation, the novellas were published in one volume titled Slow Homecoming in 1981, and Walk about the Villages was published separately in 1996.

The tetralogy has been named as a turning point in Handke's writing, when he became increasingly subjective and his expression became more solemn, which led to some negative reactions when the stories first were published.^[2] Cecile Cazort Zorach of Monatshefte called The Long Way Around a "difficult and irritating book", more complex than Handke's earlier portrayal of the United States in Short Letter, Long Farewell (1972). Cazort Zorach wrote that it has traits of Bildungsroman along with "brief excursions into surrealistic metamorphoses, grotesque humor, veiled literary allusions, ponderous (but also parodistic) Heideggerian prose, and, finally, a shift from third-person narration to an 'ich'," the latter revealing that the book is as much about its narrator as its characters.^[3] Publishers Weekly wrote that Slow Homecoming is powerful in its reflections but suffers from its lack of storytelling and characterisation.^[4]

• Suhrkamp Verlag
• Farrar, Straus and Giroux