The Children of the Dead

first publication date:  1995
original title:  Die Kinder der Toten
original language:  German

The Children of the Dead (German: Die Kinder der Toten) is a novel by Elfriede Jelinek, first published in 1995 by Rowohlt Verlag. It is commonly regarded as her magnum opus. The novel won the Literaturpreis der Stadt Bremen in 1996. The prologue and epilogue were translated into English by Louise E. Stoehr in 1998, while a full English translation by Gitta Honegger will be published by Yale University Press in 2024.Next to Jelinek's novel Neid, The Children of the Dead is her longest work. Although it can be classified as a postmodern horror novel, Jelinek herself calls it a "ghost story written in the tradition of the Gothic novel." In announcing the publication of the translation, Yale University Press described it as "a spectral journey through the catastrophic history embedded in the landscape of Austria [...]. 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".The novel constitutes an intensive examination of the memory and suppression of the Holocaust. Along with this goes an associative mode of writing which incorporates plays on words and constantly disrupts linear narration through looping and repeated narrative strands. Source: Wikipedia (en)

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