It is the late 1950s. A man is out walking in a park in Vienna. He will be beaten up by four teenagers, not for his money or anything he may have done to them, but because the youths are arrogant and very pleased with themselves. This arrogance is their way to reacting to the decaying corpse that is Austria, where everyone has a closet in which to hide their Nazi histories, their sexual perversions, and their hatred of the foreigner.
In fierce, exhilarating prose, Elfriede Jelinek shows in Wonderful, Wonderful Times how the present is corrupted by the crimes of the past.
About the Author
Elfriede Jelinek was born in the Austrian alpine resort of Murzzuschlag and grew up in Vienna, where she attended the famous Music Conservatory. The leading Austrian writer of her generation, her other works include Women as Lovers, Lust, and The Piano Teacher, now a prize winning film (all published by Serpent?s Tail), as well as plays and essays. In 1986 she was awarded the Heinrich Boll prize for her contribution to German language literature, and in 1998 she received the prestigious Georg Buchner Prize for the entirety of her work. In 2004, she was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature for her musical flow of voices and counter-voices in novels and plays that with extraordinary linguistic zeal reveal the absurdity of society?s clich?s and their subjugating power.