Elfriede Jelinek

Biography

Elfriede Jelinek was born on October 20, 1946, in Mürzzuschlag, Styria, Austria. The daughter of a personnel director and a chemist whose relatives were victims of the Holocaust, she was raised by her Romanian-German Catholic mother and non-observant Czech Jewish father. She is known for her award-winning novel "Die Klavierspielerin/The Piano Player" (1983) and her work in playwriting, earning her a 2004 Nobel Prize in Literature.