The Representation of Alaska in Peter Handke’s Slow Homecoming (1979) through the Lens of Nature Writing

This chapter proposes a reading of Peter Handke’s 1979 novel Langsame Heimkehr [Slow Homecoming] through the lens of new nature writing. With its origins in the United States as well as Great Britain, new nature writing expands the genre’s aesthetic vocabulary to include fiction as well as non-fiction, moving beyond the solitary individual exploring his subjectivity in a pristine natural setting. In the German-language context in particular, New Nature Writing also reflects on the connections between nature and nationalism and the legacies of the Nazi period. Focusing on the first part of Langsame Heimkehr, this chapter analyses Handke’s literary engagement with nature in Alaska, in particular the earth formations created by the Yukon River. With a German geologist as protagonist, Handke, who visited Alaska prior to writing his novel, integrates scientific language and thinking into his text’s deep engagement with a specific landscape far from Germany. The novel’s depiction of the relationship between humans and nature anticipates the aims of new nature writing.