The Piano Teacher: A Novel

by Elfriede Jelinek, Joachim Neugroschel (Translator)

Overview

The most popular work from provocative Austrian Nobel laureate Elfriede Jelinek, The Piano Teacher is a searing portrait of a woman bound between a repressive society and her darkest desires. Erika Kohut is a piano teacher at the prestigious and formal Vienna Conservatory, who still lives with her domineering and possessive mother. Her life appears boring, but Erika, a quiet thirty-eight-year-old, secretly visits Turkish peep shows at night and watched sadomasochistic films. Meanwhile, a handsome, self-absorbed, seventeen-year-old student has become enamored with Erika and sets out to seduce her. She resists him at first—but then the dark passions roiling under the piano teacher’s subdued exterior explode in a release of perversity, violence, and degradation.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780802144614
Publisher:	Grove/Atlantic, Inc.
Publication date:	10/01/2009
Edition description:	Reprint
Pages:	288
Sales rank:	127,331
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.20(h) x 0.90(d)

Editorial Reviews

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. (Feb.)

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

Teaching piano daily at the Vienna Conservatory is all that remains of Erika Knout's once promising career. Lately, however, her love for her star student, Walter Klemmer, is disrupting both her well-ordered professional life and her emotionally rigorous world at home with Mother. This neurotic love triangle, in which violence is confused with love, evolves toward inevitable breakdown as Erika finally defies Mother and, through Klemmer, excites chaotic passions. With her facility for metaphor and stylish narrative, Austrian Jelinek bears comparison to Schmidt and Boll at their best. Hers is a powerful debut in English; with five other novels awaiting translation, she should develop a large audience among serious readers. Paul E. Hutchison, Pennsylvania State Univ., University Park

Library Journal