Elfriede Jelinek

Elfriede Jelinek (born 20 October 1946) is an Austrian playwright and novelist. She was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2004 for her “musical flow of voices and counter-voices in novels and plays that, with extraordinary linguistic zeal, reveal the absurdity of society’s clichés and their subjugating power.”

Her work was largely unknown outside the German-speaking world before she won the Nobel Prize, and it was said to resemble that of acclaimed Austrian playwright Thomas Bernhard, with its pathology of destruction and its concomitant comedic abrogation. In fact, despite the author’s own differentiation from Austria, Jelinek’s writing is deeply rooted in the tradition of Austrian literature, showing the influence of Austrian writers such as Ingeborg Bachmann and Robert Musil.

Jelinek’s political positions, in particular her feminist stance and her Communist Party affiliations, are of vital importance to any assessment of her work. They are also a part of the reason for the vitriolic controversy directed at Jelinek and her work. —Wikipedia