GREED

Kurt Janisch is an ambitious, but frustrated, country policeman. Things are not going right in his life – at least not fast enough. But a country policeman gets talking to a lot of people in the line of duty – particularly women. Lonely, middle-aged women, women with a little bit of property perhaps… Matters go from bad to worse: for Kurt Janisch, for the women who fall for him. Someone sees too much, knows too much. 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 accessible novel since “The Piano Teacher”. As always, Jelinek gives the reader a lot more to think about: the ecological costs of affluence, the inescapable burden and inadequacy of everyday words, the exploitative nature of relations between men and women, the impossibility of life without relationships. In ‘Greed’, a powerful reflection on ageing, Jelinek expresses her love/hate relationship with Austria, producing a mesmerising portrait of evil.