"Der Chinese des Schmerzes" is one of Handke's more elusive works. Its essence are some keywords of which the most important is the "threshold": "not a frontier, but a zone", in this case between a mental emptiness or loneliness and a life full of perceptions, stories, sense and love.
Actually, there is very few action in this book: a game of cards, a visit to the narrator's family and other things like that; and all action comes to an end in the epilogue, which tells just how the narrator stands on a bridge, looks at the water of the canal and perceives what the people that pass around him are doing (and HOW they are doing it) or looking like. The most important person is the 1st person narrator, named Andreas Loser, a teacher; other characters hardly appear. Most of the book is made of Loser's perceptions and the feelings he connects with them. But the manner of these perceptions is subtlely changed by the things that happen to him in the book's pivotal moment and his "search for a witness" afterwards.
This book must be read very slowly and comfortably. Read EVERY word, stop after each phrase and try to imagine the narrator's feeling. Don't ask why he is doing certain things without clear reason. You must be able to make yourself quiet inside and then be stirred softly by Handke's narration.
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