Novel
The Piano Teacher
Die Klavierspielerin
Elfriede Jelinek · 1983
Synopsis
Vienna. Erika Kohut, thirty-six, a piano teacher at the conservatoire, whom her mother has drilled for a concert career, still lives with her and sleeps in her bed. In the evenings she frequents peep shows and watches couples in the thickets of the Prater; at home, she cuts herself. One of her pupils, Walter Klemmer, sets out to seduce her, and she reveals to him what she expects from him.
Context
The novel was published in 1983 by Rowohlt and made its author a controversial star. It takes up an autobiographical motif she has treated elsewhere, the little girl drilled in music by a mother greedy for power, and it contains clichés of language quoted ironically, pornographic jargon and administrative formulas inflated to the point of parody. Michael Haneke made a film of it in 2001, ten years after she herself had written the screenplay of a film based on a Viennese novel.
Who it is for
Nearly three hundred pages of sarcastic, crude language. The scenes of sexuality and self-mutilation in it are explicit.
Prizes and reception
The novel that brought its author her international breakthrough; the film made from it received at Cannes, in 2001, the Grand Prix and both acting prizes.
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