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Austrian Woman Wins Nobel in Literature

Posted on: Friday, 8 October 2004, 06:00 CDT

STOCKHOLM, Sweden - Austrian writer Elfriede Jelinek, a reclusive author whose feminism, leftist politics and pacifism are common themes in her works, won the Nobel Prize in literature Thursday for what the Swedish Academy called her "musical flow of voices and counter-voices in novels and plays."

Her most-famous novel, "The Piano Teacher" in 1983, was adapted into a 2001 film by director Michael Haneke, although her other works are well-known in German-speaking countries and she is widely translated in French.

Jelinek, 57, said in Vienna she would not attend the Dec. 10 award ceremony in Stockholm because she suffers from "a social phobia."

"When I write, I have always tried to be on the side of the weak. The side of the powerful is not literature's side," she said.

Her latest play, "Bambiland," written in 2003 and translated into English in 2004, is a strident attack on the U.S. war in Iraq, although Horace Engdahl, secretary-general of the academy, emphasized that the prize should not be interpreted as a political comment.

"When that play came out, this decision was - if not already made - then well under way," he said.

Engdahl said "Bambiland" depicts how "the patriotic enthusiasm turns into insanity."

And, he added, "she's completely right about that."

A sequel to "Bambiland" will appear in May as her first post- Nobel work. Titled "Babel," it deals with "the torture at the Abu Ghraib prison but also with the mutilation of the bodies of the U.S. soldiers in Fallujah," Jelinek said.

The decision to award the prize to a woman, and a poet, was the first since 1996, when Wislawa Szymborska of Poland won. Since the prize first was handed out in 1901, only 10 women have won it.

"They assured me that I received the prize because they value my work, not because I am a woman," Jelinek said, calling the Nobel "the biggest honor."

Although happy about the prize, she said "I can't stand" the attention that comes with it. With her phone and doorbell constantly ringing, Jelinek said her plans for the coming days were simply "to disappear."

On the Internet:Nobel Prizes: http://www.nobelprize.org

Nobel Literature Austrian novelist and poet Elfried Jelinek won the Nobel Prize in literature Thursday. The decision to award the prize to a woman, and a poet, was the first since 1996.

Past winners: 2003 J.M. Coetzee, South Africa 2003 Jmre Katesz, Hungary 2001 V.S. Naipaul, Trinidat-born Briton 2000 Gao Xingijan, Chinese-born French

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