Elfriede Jelinek was born in Austria in 1946 and grew up in Vienna, where she attended the famous Music Conservatory. The leading Austrian writer of her generation, she received the Heinrich Böll Prize for her contribution to German literature in 1986. The film by Michael Haneke of The Piano Teacher won the three main prizes at Cannes in 2001. Read More In 2004, she was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature. She lives in Vienna. In awarding Jelinek the Nobel Prize, the Swedish Academy wrote that the íextraordinary linguistic zealë of her writing reveals íthe absurdity of society's clichés and their subjugating power.ë