{"product_id":"fruit-thief","title":"Fruit Thief","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003eA major new novel from the Nobel laureate Peter Handke—one of his most inventive and dazzlingly original works\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eOn a summer day under a blue sky a man is stung on his foot by a bee. “The sting signaled that the time had come to set out, to hit the road. Off with you. The hour of departure has arrived.” The man boards a train to Paris, crosses the city by Métro, then boards another, disembarking in a small town on the plains to the north. He is searching for a young woman he calls the Fruit Thief, who, like him, has set off on a journey to the Vexin plateau. What follows is a vivid but dreamlike exploration of topography both physical and affective, charting the Fruit Thief’s perambulations across France’s internal borderlands: alongside rivers and through ravines, beside highways and to a bolt-hole under the stairs of an empty hotel. Chance encounters—with a man scrambling through the underbrush in search of his lost cat, and with a delivery boy who abandons his scooter to become a fellow traveler for a day—are like so many throws of the dice, each exposing new facets of this mysterious individual in the manner of a cubist portrait.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eIn prose of unrivaled precision, lucidly rendered into English by Krishna Winston, \u003ci\u003eThe Fruit Thief \u003c\/i\u003eelevates the terrain of everyday life to epic status, and situates the microgeography of an individual at the center of a book like few others. This is one of Nobel laureate Peter Handke’s most significant and original achievements.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"MediaPlace","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":57313250836862,"sku":"NW9780374906504","price":19.05,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0817\/1379\/1261\/files\/9780374906504.jpg?v=1778591710","url":"https:\/\/mediaplace.com\/products\/fruit-thief","provider":"MediaPlace","version":"1.0","type":"link"}