Elfriede Jelinek. Lust. A Novel

The novel "Lust" inaugurates a postmodernist line in the work of Elfriede Jelinek, the greatest and most "inconvenient" contemporary German-language writer and 2004 Nobel Prize laureate. Jelinek's themes are violence and power in private and intimate life, the role of women in a world of total consumerism, the dominance of everyday myths in human relationships, and the inescapable loneliness of man in the face of daily death. This book can also be defined as an anti-pornography novel, a wicked, virtuoso parody of the form and language of pornography that has overwhelmed and corroded the minds of modern man. When AIDS reaches the Alpine resort valley and threatens all lovers of change, Hermann, the all-powerful director of the local factory, is forced to give up prostitutes and limit his sexual appetite to a single woman—his wife, Gerti. Beautiful, rich, and happy, Gertie is sick and tired of her husband's unbearable, daily routine. But leaving means losing everything. She regularly tries to escape from home, but usually ends up in the police station. And then one day, on a snowy road, in her dressing gown and slippers, a student picks her up and... Do you really believe in a happy ending?