The first of Handke's novels to be published in English, The Goalie's Anxiety at the Penalty Kick is a true modern classic that caused an enormous stir in the 1970s both in Europe and the United States with its innovative use of language and its searing portrait of a troubled man in an equally troubled society. 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.