Greed: A Novel - Softcover

Jelinek, Elfriede

Softcover

ISBN 10: 158322842X ISBN 13: 9781583228425

Publisher: Seven Stories Press, 2008

Synopsis

From the Nobel Prize-winning author ....

Greed is the story of Kurt Janisch, an ambitious but frustrated country policeman, and the lonely women he seduces. It is a thriller set amid the mountains and small towns of southern Austria, where the investigation of a dead girl’s body in a lake leads to the discovery of more than a single crime. In
her signature style, Jelinek chronicles the exploitative nature of relations between men and women, and the cruelties of everyday life.

About this title

About the Author:

The leading Austrian writer of her generation, ELFRIEDE JELINEK received the Heinrich Böll Prize for her contribution to German literature in 1986. The film by Michael Haneke of The Piano Teacher won the three main prizes at Cannes in 2001. In 2004, she was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature. She lives in Vienna. In awarding Jelinek the Nobel Prize, the Swedish Academy wrote that the "extraordinary linguistic zeal" of her writing reveals "the absurdity of society’s clichés and their subjugating power."

Review:

?Greed has considerable energy and force. Its moral urgency is beyond doubt? Independent ?The real thrills lie in Jelinek?s droll, penetrating insight? Her challenging words boast a lingering impact; through to its denouement, Greed is ? like the writer herself ? relentless and remoseless? Metro ?Her novels evoke a hyperreality, where authentic experience is eclipsed by the recycled images of the mass media? Financial Times ?For anyone who wants to write or read daredevil, risk-taking prose, it was tremendously encouraging that Elfriede Jelinek won the Nobel prize for literature in 2004? Jelinek seized the novel by its bootstraps and shook it upside down? Her dynamic writing gives a sense of civilization surviving against the odds? Jelinek?s work is brave, adventurous, witty, antagonistic and devastatingly right about the sorriness of human existence, and her contempt is expressed with surprising chirpiness: it?s a wild ride? wonderful, defiant mischief-making? Guardian ?Global ecology, ageing and disturbing late-middle-aged female sexuality eat at the heart of Nobel prizewinner Jelinek?s provocative, mesmerizing, multi-level detective story of murderous evil? Saga Magazine ?[Jelinek] is on uncompromising form? TLS ?The power with Jelinek creates such a claustrophobic, disturbing narrative is impressive? Scotland on Sunday ?An intriguing and, at times, devastating novel? the underlying themes of dominance and submission?really capture the imagination and pervade Jelinek?s colourful blend of poetry and prose? Psychologies ?A powerful psychological thriller from a Nobel Prize-winning author? Red ?Jelinek?s pages pullulate with weird but wonderful lines that only she could have written... [She] is famous for her seriousness, metaphysical, political, ecological. But she is really a comic writer, like Beckett: a joker in the dark... So is it worth it, and is Jelinek worth her Nobel Prize? Yes: for those weird and wonderful lines, and for those jokes in the dark? Literary Review

About this edition

• Publisher: Seven Stories Press
• Publication date: 2008
• ISBN 10: 158322842X
• ISBN 13: 9781583228425
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 336