Lust

(, Main)

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Description

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.

Reviews

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 *

Author Bio

Elfriede Jelinek was born in Austria in 1946 and grew up in Vienna where she attended the famous Music Conservatory. The leading Austrian writer of her generation, she has been awarded the Heinrich Boll Prize for her contribution to German literature. The film by Michael Haneke of The Piano Teacher won the three main prizes at Cannes in 2001. In 2004, Elfriede Jelinek was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature. Her latest novel is Greed.