''The Children of the Dead'' (german: Die Kinder der Toten) is a novel by
Elfriede Jelinek
Elfriede Jelinek (; born 20 October 1946) is an Austrian playwright and novelist. She is one of the most decorated authors writing in German today and was awarded the 2004 Nobel Prize in Literature for her "musical flow of voices and counter-vo ...
, first published in 1995 by
Rowohlt Verlag
Rowohlt Verlag is a German publishing house based in Hamburg, with offices in Reinbek and Berlin. It has been part of the Georg von Holtzbrinck Group since 1982. The company was created in 1908 in Leipzig by Ernst Rowohlt.
Divisions
* Kinder
* ...
. It is commonly regarded as her
magnum opus
A masterpiece, ''magnum opus'' (), or ''chef-d’œuvre'' (; ; ) in modern use is a creation that has been given much critical praise, especially one that is considered the greatest work of a person's career or a work of outstanding creativity, ...
. The novel won the
Literaturpreis der Stadt Bremen
The Bremen Literature Prize (german: link=no, Literaturpreis der Stadt Bremen, literally: Literature Prize of the city of Bremen) is a German literary award. The prize money is €25,000 (Förderpreis: €6,000).
Recipients
*1954 Heinrich Schm ...
in 1996. The prologue and epilogue were translated into English by Louise E. Stoehr in 1998, while a full English translation by Gitta Honegger is forthcoming.
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."
["Gespensterroman in der Tradition der gothic novel": Grohotolsky, Ernst (ed.). ''Provinz sozusagen''. Graz: Droschl, 1995, p. 63.]
The novel constitutes an intensive examination of the memory and suppression of the
Holocaust
The Holocaust, also known as the Shoah, was the genocide of European Jews during World War II. Between 1941 and 1945, Nazi Germany and its collaborators systematically murdered some six million Jews across German-occupied Europe; ...
. 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.
Plot
The novel is unusual amongst literary works in German in that all the characters are
undead
The undead are beings in mythology, legend, or fiction that are deceased but behave as if alive. Most commonly the term refers to corporeal forms of formerly-alive humans, such as mummies, vampires, and zombies, who have been reanimated by supe ...
in the process of decomposition and are presented as mute
zombie
A zombie ( Haitian French: , ht, zonbi) is a mythological undead corporeal revenant created through the reanimation of a corpse. Zombies are most commonly found in horror and fantasy genre works. The term comes from Haitian folklore, in w ...
s in the manner of
splatter film
A splatter film is a subgenre of horror films that deliberately focuses on graphic portrayals of wikt:gore, gore and graphic violence. These films, usually through the use of special effects, display a fascination with the vulnerability of the h ...
s. Of these undead protagonists, the three primary are Gudrun Bichler, Edgar Gstranz and Karin Frenzel; they are incapable of speech, obsessed with sex, and brutal. They are confronted with the mass of Holocaust victims, who wish to achieve new life by means of the couple, Gudrun and Edgar; however their plan fails since Gudrun and Edgar are likewise undead. The setting dissolves into a sea of mud.
Adaptations
In 2019, directors Kelly Copper and Pavol Liska collaborated on a feature film adaptation, ''Die Kinder der Toten'', in a
comedy horror style.
References
Further reading
*Ballhausen, Thomas / Krenn, Günter: This is Hell: Elfriede Jelinek’s „Children of the Dead“ and Her Rewriting of Herk Harvey’s „Carnival of Soul“. In: Autelitano, Alice / Re, Valentina (Hg.): il racconto del film. narrating the film. Udine 2006.
*Gsoels-Lorensen, Jutta: Elfriede Jelinek's "Die Kinder der Toten": Representing the Holocaust as an Austrian Ghost Story. In: ''Germanic Review''. Volume 81, No 4, Autumn 2006.
*Just, Rainer: Zeichenleichen - Reflexionen über das Untote im Werk Elfriede Jelineks.
*Kecht, Maria Regina: The Polyphony of Remembrance. Reading „Die Kinder der Toten“
€žThe Children of the Dead“ In: Lamb-Faffelberger, Margarete / Konzett, Matthias P. (Hg.): Elfriede Jelinek. Writing Woman, Nation, and Identity. Madison 2007. S. 189-220.
*Ortner, Jessica: Poetologie „nach Auschwitz“. Narratologie, Semantik und sekundäre Zeugenschaft in Elfriede Jelineks Roman „Die Kinder der Toten“. Kopenhagen, Diss. 2012.
*Wilson, Ian W.: Greeting the Holocaust's Dead? Narrative Strategies and the Undead in Elfriede Jelinek's „Die Kinder der Toten“. In: Modern Austrian Literature. Vol. 39, No. 3/4, 2006. S. 27-55.
{{DEFAULTSORT:Children of the Dead, The
Novels by Elfriede Jelinek
1995 Austrian novels
Rowohlt Verlag books
Novels about the Holocaust