During the day she lives with her old mother, which she hates-loves beyond the limits of psychological sadomasochism. At night she breaks her middle class image and falls deep in the peep show atmosphere. Erika Kahut is one of the best characters created by Elfriede Jelinek. She is a piano teacher who will apparently break the sense of uselessness of her life by meeting Walter, who is one of her most brilliant students. Together with Lust, this is Jelinek's most known novel. The Piano Teacher contains all the themes which are important to its author: the abuse of power, the slave-master relationship, the sexual abuse of the woman. Elfriede jelinek was born in 1946 in Murzzuschlag. She lives between Vienna and Munich. She is among the most important authors of German contemporary literature. Her works - novels, plays, articles - were translated in amny languages even before she won the Noble Prize. Close to Thomas Bernhard on criticizing Austrian society and its injustice, she once claimed not to love her land as a state. She won the Noble Prize for Literature for her musical flow of voices in her novels and plays which reveals the absurdity of society and their tyrannical power.
Since the beginnings, she was interested in defending lower classes rights.
She denounced since the beginnings the neo-nazi phenomena and she was among the opponent of Jorg Haider. She is a difficult writer and a controversial person who seizes Austrian people in two parts. She is hated by many persons who felt accused by her political claims. Her works are sarcastic. Especially in the last years she was attacked by the most conservative political wings. She try not to show herself in public. Even accepting the Nobel Prize, she did not go in Stockholm. She said she received the prize in the name of the women she writes about. She said she was obviously happy to receive it. However she had more doubts than joy and she did not want to be the center of the attention. The Piano Teacher has a very simple plot and it could have been a love story with a happy end. However, the author refused to give the protagonist her redemption. Together with her mother, Walter will become Erika's second persecutor.