Kurt Janisch is an ambitious, but frustrated country policeman. Things are not going right in his life – at least not fast enough. But a country policeman gets talking to a lot of people in the line of duty – particularly women. Lonely, middle-aged women, women with a bit of property perhaps… Matters go from bad to worse: for Kurt Janisch, for the women who fall for him. Someone sees too much, knows too much. Soon there's a body in a lake and a murderer to be caught.

A thriller set amid the mountains and small towns of southern Austria, Greed is Elfriede Jelinek's most accessible novel since The Piano Teacher. But as always Jelinek gives the reader a lot more to think about: the ecological costs of affluence, the inescapable burden and inadequacy of our everyday words, the exploitative nature of relations between men and women, the impossibility of life without relationships. A meditative reflection on ageing, Greed is another chapter in Jelinek?s chronicling of her love/hate relationship with Austria.

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