Greed
Elfriede Jelinek author Martin Chalmers translator
Format:Paperback
Publisher:Profile Books Ltd
Published:30th Oct '08
Currently unavailable, and unfortunately no date known when it will be back
Kurt Janisch is an ambitious, but frustrated country policeman. Things are not going right in his life - at least not fast enough. But a country policeman gets talking to a lot of people in the line of duty - particularly women. Lonely, middle-aged women, women with a bit of property perhaps... Matters go from bad to worse: for Kurt Janisch, for the women who fall for him. Someone sees too much, knows too much. Soon there's a body in a lake and a murderer to be caught. A thriller set amid the mountains and small towns of southern Austria, Greed is Elfriede Jelinek's most accessible novel since The Piano Teacher. But as always Jelinek gives the reader a lot more to think about: the ecological costs of affluence, the inescapable burden and inadequacy of our everyday words, the exploitative nature of relations between men and women, the impossibility of life without relationships. A meditative reflection on ageing, Greed is another chapter in Jelinek?s chronicling of her love/hate relationship with Austria.
Greed has considerable energy and force. Its moral urgency is beyond doubt. * Independent *
Her novels evoke a hyperreality, where authentic experience is eclipsed by the recycled images of the mass media. * Financial Times *
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 *
A poetic mystery. Jelinek writes from somewhere else. She never wavers. She is steadfast... there is nothing accidental in these pages. Their darkness rings, the reader echoes. It is an enduring achievement. * Scotsman *
A bleak, disconcerting, provocative exploration of the differences between men and women * Sunday Business Post *
ISBN: 9781846686665
Dimensions: 198mm x 129mm x 24mm
Weight: 287g
352 pages
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