In 1966, Handke's first novel "The Hornets" was published. It is an attempt to describe the creation of a novel. A man read a book years ago, or perhaps he didn't even read it, but only heard about it from someone else. One day in summer, however, he is reminded of that lost book, which he believes he read long ago, perhaps due to a coincidence between what is happening to him and what happened to the blind hero of the novel. From the fragmented pieces he thinks he remembers—words, sentences, half-forgotten images—the man imagines the novel in such a way that it remains undecidable whether the events in the "new" novel pertain only to the "hero" of the old novel or also to him, the one who is imagining it.