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| Austrian novelist and playwright Elfriede
Jelinek is pictured in a May 1999 file photograph. Jelinek won the
Nobel Prize for Literature October 7, 2004, the Swedish Academy
said. She is the first woman to win the prestigious prize since
1996. (Reuters) |
Acclaimed and controversial Austrian writer Elfriede Jelinek, whose
work often explores the role of women in society, was awarded the 2004
Nobel Literature Prize, the Swedish Academy announced.
Jelinek, 57, only the 10th woman to win the Nobel Literature Prize, is
the author of "The Piano Teacher", which was made into an acclaimed film
by Michael Haneke in 2001.
Jelinek is the first Austrian to take the coveted award and will
receive a prize sum of 10 million kronor (1.1 million euros, 1.3 million
dollars).
She won the award "for her musical flow of voices and counter-voices in
novels and plays that with extraordinary linguistic zeal reveal the
absurdity of society's cliches and their subjugating power," the jury
said.
Highly respected abroad for her literary exploration of gender issues,
sexuality and violence in society, Jelinek is also controversial in her
native Austria for her views on contemporary political issues, such as the
Iraq war, anti-Semitism and xenophobia .
"Jelinek is a highly controversial figure in her homeland," and once
even depicted Austria as "a realm of death" in a novel, the jury said.
In many of her works, including the semi-autobiographical "The Piano
Teacher", Jelinek presents a pitiless world of violence and submission,
hunter and prey.
The novel, and the subsequent film, graphically and explicitly explore
voyeurism and masochism, and trace the self-destruction of the main
protagonist, Erika Kohut, a piano teacher at the Vienna Conservatory.
Kohut, in her forties and suffering from a deeply disturbed
relationship with her mother, trawls the seedy side of contemporary
Vienna, until her existence is disturbed by a young male student who falls
in love with her, and whose romantic ideas are challenged by her disturbed
sexuality.
One of Jelinek's basic themes is the inability of women to "fully come
to life in a world where they are painted over with stereotypical images",
the Academy said in its citation.
In many novels, she depicts power and aggression as the driving forces
of relationships and uses pornographic description of sexuality,
aggression and abuse to underpin
this point, like in the novel "Lust".
Speculation had been rife in Stockholm this year that women writers,
long overlooked by the Swedish Academy which each year awards the Nobel
Literature Prize, were well-placed to take home the honours this time.
The favourites included Algeria's Assia Djebar, Joyce Carol Oates of
the United States and a Dane, Inger Christensen, but not Jelinek.
She will receive the Nobel Prize, which consists of the prize money, a
gold medal and a diploma, from Sweden's King Carl XVI Gustaf at a formal
ceremony in Stockholm on December 10, the anniversary of the death of
Alfred Nobel, the founder of the Nobel Prizes, in 1896.
She said the prize was "surprising and a great honor," but added she
might not travel to Stockholm for the award ceremony. "I cannot at this
time deal with people," she said.
The Nobel committee said Jelinek was part of an Austrian tradition of
"linguistically sophisticated social criticism", which includes Karl
Kraus, Elias Canetti and Thomas Bernhard.
Austrian President Heinz Fischer said he "heartily" welcomed the news,
and said the prize served as a "tribute to all Austrian literature."
But in an illustration of her conflictual relationship with her home
country's establishment, Jelinek quipped that said she did not see the
prize as "a feather in Austria's cap."
Jelinek retired from public life in 1996 after rightwing politicians
from Joerg Haider's Freedom Party (FPOe) used her name in campaigns,
denouncing her work as low and immoral art.
(Agencies) | 
Updated: 2004-10-08 10:07