DIE KLAVIERSPIELERIN : Roman (German Edition)

Hamburg, Germany: Rowohlt Taschenbuch Verlag, 2007. 1st Edition . Soft cover. Near Fine/None as Issued. Text/New & Bright; German language. Softcover/NF; light shelfwear w/faint creasing to upper back corner. DIE KLAVIERSPIELERIN (The Piano Player), was first published in 1983; this a re-issue of 2007. Novel of human cruelty from Austrian playwright & novelist, winner of 2004 Nobel Prize for Literature Elfriede Jelinek (1946 -). Story of Erika Kohut, a piano professor at the Vienna Conservatory. She lives with a controlling mother under complete surveillance. Disappointed w/Erika's failed pianist career, the mother reigns in terror. Erika resorts to self-mutilation by knives and inflicting the same cruelty & humiliation suffered at home on to her piano students. Then master student Walter Klemmerer enters the scene. He courts Erika who responds dismissively. When Klemmerer proved undeterred, Erika writes a detailed proposal of sadistic sex, which, being the initiator, would secure her dominance in the union. Klemmerer recoils in disgust but an ugly sexual encounter does occurs --- his disgust turns into hatred and leaves; Erika realizes that she only feels pleasure in suffering & punishment, and returns home. The novel was adapted 2001 to film, under the same title, by Austrian director Michael Haneke; it triumphed at the 2001 Cannes Film Festival: Grand Prix of the Jury and Acting Awards for Isabelle Huppert and Benoît Magimel.