The first English translation of Nobel laureate Elfriede Jelinek's astonishing, provocative play, a post-dramatic theatrical exploration of the making, marketing and sale of the human body. It explores contemporary society's obsession with fitness and body culture, bringing into sharp focus our need to belong to a group, team, and nation.

“Greed is another intriguing and challenging novel from Europe's cleverest, most visceral social phobic.”—The List

In her first novel published in English since becoming the recipient of the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2004, Elfriede Jelinek delivers a stunning and unforgettable book.

Greed is the story of Kurt Janisch, an ambitious but frustrated country policeman, and the lonely women he seduces. It is a thriller set amid the mountains and small towns of southern Austria, where the investigation of a dead girl's body in a lake leads to the discovery of more than a single crime. In her signature style, Jelinek chronicles the exploitative nature of relations between men and women, and the cruelties of everyday life.

Always controversial, Jelinek was considered a bold choice for the Nobel Prize. The Swedish academy applauded her linguistic zeal and analytic prowess, while her critics have been scandalized by her satirical critiques of patriarchy and her masochistic heroines.

The leading Austrian writer of her generation, Elfriede Jelinek has been awarded the Heinrich Böll Prize and the Nobel Prize for Literature.

Ulrike Meinhof (1934 -1976) was one of the most influential thinkers of the German Left in the 1960s, known primarily through her columns in the magazine, konkret. She became an internationally known fugitive when she aided in the prison escape of Andreas Baader and formed the Red Army Faction, also known as the Baader-Meinhof Gang. She was imprisoned in 1972 and found, four years later, hanged in her cell.

Karin Bauer is associate professor and chair of the Department of German Studies at McGill University.

Kurt Janisch is an ambitious but frustrated country policeman who gets talking to a lot of people in the line of duty, particularly to women: lonely, middle-aged women with a bit of extra property. . . . Things go from bad to worse, for Kurt Janisch and the women who fall for him. Someone sees and knows too much, and soon there’s a body in a lake and a murderer to be caught.

A thriller set amid the mountains and small towns of southern Austria, Greed is Elfriede Jelinek’s most important novel since The Piano Teacher. In her inimitable way, Jelinek touches on the ecological costs of affluence, the inescapable burden of language, the exploitative nature of relations between men and women, the impossibility of life without relationships. A meditative reflection on aging, Greed is another chapter in Jelinek’s chronicling of her love-hate relationship with her native Austria.

Elfriede Jelinek was born in Austria in 1946 and grew up in Vienna, where she attended the famous Music Conservatory. The leading Austrian writer of her generation, she has been awarded the Heinrich Boll Prize for her contribution to German literature. The film of The Piano Teacher by Michael Haneke won the three main prizes at Cannes in 2001. In 2004, she was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature.