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In The Piano Teacher, Elfride Jelinek creates a shocking portrait of a talented, capable woman fashioned by society into a ticking bomb. Set in 1980s Vienna, it describes a culture rotting under the weight of its oppressive, outmoded ideals—a place mirrored by the heroine's own repressed dreams.
Erika Kohut, piano teacher at the prestigious Vienna Conservatory, is a quiet woman devoted to Bach, Beethoven, and her domineering mother. Her life consists of desperate boredom, neurotic possessiveness, and hopeless dreams of a concert career whose hour has long passed. Enter Walter Klemmer—a handsome, arrogant man out to conquer Erika's affections. Suddenly the dangerous passions roiling under her subdued exterior explode in a release of sexual perversity and long-buried violence.
Awarded the Nobel and the Heinrich Boll Prize for her outstanding contribution to German letters, Elfriede Jelinek is one of the most original and controversial writers in Austria today. The Piano Teacher was made into an acclaimed film by Michael Haneke in 2001.
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Creators
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Publisher
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Release date
August 8, 2018 -
Formats
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Kindle Book
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OverDrive Read
- ISBN: 9780802198839
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EPUB ebook
- ISBN: 9780802198839
- File size: 2406 KB
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Languages
- English
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Reviews
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February 3, 1992
A brilliant and uncompromising tale of sexuality and violence set in modern Vienna; Jelinek's Wonderful, Wonderful Times was selected as one of PW 's best 1990 paperbacks. -
January 1, 1988
Sexuality and violence are coupled in this brilliant, uncompromising book set in modern-day Vienna, by the winner of the 1986 Heinrich Boll Prize. Erika Kohut, a spinster in her mid-30s, has been selected by her domineering mother to be sacrificed on the altar of art. Carefully groomed and trained, she's unfortunately not gifted enough to become a concert pianist. Instead, she teaches piano at the Vienna Conservatory. She still lives at home, and in the eyes of the world is the dutiful daughter. But there's another, perversely sexual side of Erika that she finds difficult to repress. She goes to a peep show, frequents the local park where Turks and Serbo-Croats pick up women and, just for kicks, slices herself with a razor. When one of her students, Walter Klemmer, falls in love with her, Erika demands sadomasochistic rituals before she'll agree to sleep with him. While the subject matter is deliberately perverse, Jelinek gets behind the cream-puff prettiness of Vienna; this novel is not for the weak of heart. Violence is a cleansing force, a point that brings back uncomfortable overtones of an Austria 50 years ago.
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