Elfriede Jelinek - Work and Politics

Work and Politics

Her work was largely unknown outside the German-speaking world before she won the Nobel Prize. Despite the author's own differentiation from Austria (due to her criticism of Austria's Nazi-past) Jelinek's writing is deeply rooted in the tradition of Austrian literature, showing the influence of Austrian writers such as Ingeborg Bachmann and Robert Musil.

Jelinek's political positions, in particular her feminist stance and her Communist Party affiliations, are of vital importance to any assessment of her work. They are also a part of the reason for the controversy directed at Jelinek and her work.

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