The Children of the DeadElfriede JelinekLabel: Yale University PressDescription: The magnum opus of 2004 Nobel laureate Elfriede Jelinek—a spectral journey through the catastrophic history embedded in the landscape of Austria “The surface of [Jelinek’s] prose cracks and bursts . . . fissured by phantasmagorical description gallows humor multilingual puns and scouring sarcasm. . . . Jelinek’s novel is finally . . . a furious accumulation of lost moments and possible outcomes an enormous spectral kaleidoscope erected before the unfathomable.—Dustin Illingworth Washington Post The Alpenrose is a mountain resort nestled in Austria’s scenic landscape among historic churches and castles. It is a vacation idyll that attracts tourists from all over Europe. It is also a mass burial site. Amid the snow-topped peaks and panoramic vistas ghosts haunt the forest: Edgar Gstranz a young skier who died in a car crash; Gudrun Bichler a philosophy student who committed suicide in her bathtub; and Karin Frenzel a widow who (perhaps) died in a bus accident. As the three slip in and out of the hotel engaging unsuspecting tourists and seeking a way to return to life the soil begins to crack under their feet as the dead of the Holocaust awaken: zombies determined to exact their revenge. Scrupulously rendered for the first time in English by Gitta Honegger The Children of the Dead takes readers on a mind-bending ride through time space and memory. Concocted from experimental theater splatter film Gothic literature philosophy religion and more Jelinek’s phantasmagorical masterwork is a fierce confrontation with our fraught legacies in the name of the innocent dead.
