Pokhot' [Lust]

The novel Lust opens a postmodern vein in the creativity of the largest and most inconvenient modern German-speaking writer of the present, 2004 Nobel prize winner, E. Jelinek. Her themes involve private and personal life, the role of women in total consummerism, the domination of myths of ordinary consciousness in human relations, and the inescapable loneliness of a person close to death. Since AIDS has reached a resort Alpine valley and threatens change, Herman, the all-powerful director of a local factory, is forced to refuse prostitutes and to limit his sexual diet to one woman - his wife Gerti. However, the beautiful, rich, and happy Gerti is fed up with the routine of the same intolerable husband day in and day out. But to leave means to lose all. She regularly tries to run from the house but, as a rule, finds herself in a police station.