The most popular work from provocative Nobel Laureate Elfriede Jelinek, "The Piano Teacher" is a searing portrait of a woman bound between a repressive society and her darkest desires. Thirty-eight-year-old Erika Kohut teaches piano at the prestigious and formal Vienna Conservatory, and still lives with her domineering mother. Her life appears boring, but Erika has a secret: she visits turkish peep shows at night and watches sadomasochistic films. When a handsome, self-absorbed, seventeen-year-old student attempts to seduce her, she resists - but then the dark passions roiling under her subdued exterior explode in a release of perversity, violence, and degradation.