埃尔夫丽德·耶利内克，1946年10月20日生于奥地利的米尔茨楚施拉格一个有捷克犹太血统的家庭。自幼开始学习钢琴、管风琴和长笛，后进入维也纳音乐学院就读。1964年毕业后，进入维也纳大学学习戏剧和艺术史。1971年在维也纳大学获得管风琴硕士学位。70年代初，她辗转柏林、罗马等地。1974年与戈特弗里德·许恩斯贝格结婚，居住在慕尼黑和维也纳。耶利内克很早就开始写诗，1967年出版诗集《丽莎的影子》。1970年发表讽刺小说《宝贝，我们是诱饵》。此后写下了大量的小说、戏剧、散文和诗歌作品。代表作是带有自传成分的《钢琴教师》。主要作品有长篇小说《女情人们》(1975)、《钢琴教师》(1983)、《欲》(1989)、《死者的孩子们》(1995)、《贪婪》(2000)，戏剧《克拉拉S》(1981)、《城堡戏剧》(1985)、《在阿尔卑斯山上》(2002)、《死亡与少女I—V》(2002)等。

她先后获得过海因利希·伯尔奖、施蒂利亚州文学奖、格奥尔格·毕希纳奖等许多奖项，2004年荣膺诺贝尔文学奖。

The Piano Teacher, the most famous novel of Elfriede Jelinek, who was awarded the 2004 Nobel Prize in Literature, is a shocking, searing, aching portrait of a woman bound between a repressive society and her darkest desires. Erika Kohut is a piano teacher at the prestigious and formal Vienna Conservatory, who still lives with her domineering and possessive mother. Her life appears to be a seamless tissue of boredom, but Erika, a quiet thirty-eight-year-old, secretly visits Turkish peep shows at night to watch live sex shows and sadomasochistic films. Meanwhile, a handsome, self-absorbed, seventeen-year-old student has become enamored with Erika and sets out to seduce her. She resists him at first, but then the dark passions roiling under the piano teacher's subdued exterior explode in a release of sexual perversity, suppressed violence, and human degradation. Celebrated throughout Europe for the intensity and frankness of her writings and awarded the Heinrich Böll Prize for her outstanding contribution to German letters, Elfriede Jelinek is one of the most original and controversial writers in the world today. The Piano Teacher was made into a film, released in the United States in 2001, was awarded the Grand Jury Prize at Cannes.