"The first of Peter Handke's novels to be published in English, ""The Goalie's Anxiety at the Penalty Kick ""is a true modern classic that ""portrays the...breakdown of a murderer in ways that recall Camus's ""The Stranger"""" (Richard Locke, ""The New York Times). ""The self-destruction of a soccer goalie turned construction worker who wanders aimlessly around a stifling Austrian border town after pursuing and then murdering, almost unthinkingly, a female movie cashier is mirrored by his use of direct, sometimes fractured prose that conveys ""at its best a seamless blend of lyricism and horror seen in the runes of a disintegrating world"" (Bill Marx, ""Boston Sunday Globe). """