The Piano Teacher.

JELINEK, Elfriede.

$850.00

Item Number: 133735

New York: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1988.

First American edition of the Nobel Prize-winning author’s first book to be translated into English. Octavo, original half cloth. Presentation copy, inscribed and dated by the author on the title page, “For Adrian Elfriede Jelinek Wien, 12.1.09.” Fine in a fine dust jacket. Jacket design by Krystyna Skalski. Jacket illustration by Michael Christman. Author’s photograph by Eva Kern. Translated by Joachim Neugroschel.

Sexuality and violence are coupled in this reveling story set in modern-day Vienna by Elfriedge Jelinek, winner of the Heinrich Boll Prize (1986). It's his first novel to be translated into English, and it won the author the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2004. The Piano Teacher depicts the emotionally rigorous world of Erika, and the neurotic love triangle that confuses violence for love. The inevitable breakdown is an insight beyond what Jelinek saw as the artificial prettiness of Vienna to show a side still reminiscent of its uncomfortable early post-war years. The novel was adapted into a film in 2001, directed by Michael Haneke, and it won numerous awards, including Best Actor and Best Actress at the 2001 Cannes Film Festival, and Best Foreign Film at the 2002 German Film Awards.