Lust
Elfriede Jelinek author Michael Hulse translator
Format:Paperback
Publisher:Profile Books Ltd
Published:15th Mar '92
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In a quaint Austrian ski resort, things are not quite what they seem. Hermann, the manager of a paper mill, has decided that sexual gratification begins at home. Which means Gerti - his wife and property. Gerti is not asked how she feels about the use Hermann puts her to. She is a receptacle into which Hermann pours his juices, nastily, briefly, brutally. The long-suffering and battered Gerti thinks she has found her saviour and love in Michael, a student who rescues her after a day of vigorous use by her husband. But Michael is on his way up the Austrian political ladder, and he is, after all, a man.
Sport, capitalism, male penetrative sexuality, bourgeois consumerism, the family - are pilloried in between the ceaseless rapes, buggeries and other adventures. Extraordinarily well-written, with many brilliant turns of phrase, this remains in my mind as the most disturbing European novel I have read this year -- Robert Carver * New Statesman *
A thorough rubbishing of romantic love, Lust is intricately written with a tumbling pace, sustained and effective word-play and plenty of sharp, cynical authorial observation. More than good. * List *
The literary equivalent of Cindy Sherman's photographs of oozing, dislocated sex organs or a particularly corrosive lyric by PJ Harvey... as seamy and utterly honest as Martin Amis's Money * TLS *
ISBN: 9781852421830
Dimensions: 198mm x 128mm x 17mm
Weight: 178g
208 pages
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