A
Literary Saloon
&
Site of Review.
Trying to meet all your book preview and review needs.
| Main |
 |
| the Best |
| the Rest |
| Review Index |
| Links |
to e-mail us:
support the site
Unter Tieren
by
Elfriede Jelinek
general information | review summaries | our review | links | about the author
| Title: | Unter Tieren |
| Author: | Elfriede Jelinek |
| Genre: | Play |
| Written: | 2026 |
| Length: | 216 pages |
| Original in: | German |
| Availability: | Unter Tieren - Deutschland |
- Unter Tieren has not yet been translated into English
- Unter Tieren is to premiere 16 August 2026 at the Salzburg Festival, in a production directed by Nicolas Stemann
- Return to top of the page -
Our Assessment:
(-) : wild, and an interesting take and approach
See our review for fuller assessment.
| Source | Rating | Date | Reviewer |
|---|---|---|---|
| junge Welt | . | 10/7/2026 | Ken Merten |
| NZZ | . | 19/6/2026 | Paul Jandl |
| Die Zeit | . | 26/6/2026 | Volker Weidermann |
From the Reviews:
- "Unter Tieren liest sich wie der Blog eines so manisch-depressiven wie schizoiden Kryptobros mit Furryfell, der mit sich einen Dialog führt, der keiner ist und auch nicht sein soll, weil es so etwas wie Gesellschaft ja nun mal nicht gibt, wenn man sie verweigert." - Ken Merten, junge Welt
- "Neben ihren intellektuellen Fähigkeiten zeichnet die Tiere vor allem eines aus: Sie reden, wie die österreichische Literaturnobelpreisträgerin immer schon geschrieben hat. In luftigen Assoziationsketten und mit dogmatischer Widerspruchsfreude. Einspruch nicht mehr möglich. Jetzt rede ich. (...) Aber irgendwie ist es auch egal, was das hier ist. Stück, Essay oder Roman. Es macht keinen Unterschied, weil Produkte aus dem Wiener Laboratorium keiner Logik der Form folgen. Es sind Monologe, die in die Welt hinausgesprochen werden, höre sie, wer wolle. (...) Man muss Unter Tieren, diesen wortreichen Koloss der bald Achtzigjährigen, die die Öffentlichkeit scheut, als eine Art Vermächtnis lesen. " - Paul Jandl, Neue Zürcher Zeitung
- "Es ist aber eher ein Textfluss, in den man irgendwo hineinspringen kann und, wo auch immer, augenblicklich mitgerissen wird von Jelineks Sarkasmus, ihrem Humor, ihrer Wut und diesen donauwellenartig wogenden Sätzen (.....) Nichts an Jelineks Textwelt ist real. Es ist eher hyperreal, die Wahrheit hinter der Wahrheit des alltäglich gesprochenen Wortes. Die Tiere, die Jelinek ihren Text aufsagen lässt, lassen sich die gute Laune auf gar keinen Fall verderben. Gleich sind sie Schnitzel, jetzt, sagen sie, tanzen sie noch schnell die Welt kaputt." - Volker Weidermann, Die Zeit
Please note that these ratings solely represent the complete review's biased interpretation and subjective opinion of the actual reviews and do not claim to accurately reflect or represent the views of the reviewers. Similarly the illustrative quotes chosen here are merely those the complete review subjectively believes represent the tenor and judgment of the review as a whole. We acknowledge (and remind and warn you) that they may, in fact, be entirely unrepresentative of the actual reviews by any other measure.
- Return to top of the page -
The complete review's Review:
[Note: Unter Tieren has not yet been translated into English. This review is based on the German original, and all translations are mine.]
Those not familiar with Elfriede Jelinek's works for the stage might not immediately recognize Unter Tieren ('Among Animals') as a play.
Not so much because it doesn't come with a dramatis personæ-listing at the beginning (or end) but because of the appearance of the work more generally.
With its blocks of text it could easily pass for a novel.
Yes, rather than chapters there are scenes, attributed to a variety of animals -- the characters (cum narrators) --, but these are blocks of what looks like monologue; only very rarely is there any back and forth, and what there is of that is certainly not (presented as) the usual kind of dialogue or conversation one might expect in a drama.
There is only the slightest bit of stage-direction as well -- generally (but not always) when the speaker(s) of the next section are introduced.
So, for example, the play opens with a 'Prologue on the Balcony', with:
EIN PAAR TAUBEN, picketty, picketty !, äh, also pickend halt:Most of the sections only involve a single speaker, but where there are more than one Jelinek is uninterested in attribution -- who says what among them. So for example, we find:
[A FEW PIGEONS, peckitty, peckitty !, uh, well, just pecking along:]
ZWEI STOCKENTEN treten gemeinsam auf und teilen sich das irgendwie auf, aber nicht nach syntaktischen Gesetzen, sie fallen einander nur ins Wort, denn sie sind einander im Wort:Clearly -- and this is not unusual for plays by Jelinek -- the director (and actors) have great latitude in how to stage and present the piece. (I assumed that much of the text would also be cut for performance -- as also is often done with Jelinek's texts --, given its length (216 pages of prose in the printed edition), but the programme notes for the Salzburg Festival premiere give a run-time of "ca. 4 h", so at least for the initial run they seem to bravely be going at least close to all-in.)
[TWO MALLARDS appear together and divide it up between them in some way, but not according to syntactic rules; they just break into each other's speech, because they are bound to each other's words:]
Unter Tieren deals with the world of now all-pervading *high* finance and speculation. The animals see very clearly that in our present-day it is money, above all else, that makes the world go around -- or rather, spin wildly out of any sort of rational control. Jelinek's menagerie philosophically understands and accepts that they are collateral damage in all this wheeling and dealing (all too clearly recognizing that: "Tod und Geld, sie sind Geschwister" ('Death and money, they're siblings')), with Jelinek using both general as well as specific recent real-world examples (including of some recent Austria-specific scandals, but also ranging far beyond; the 2025 bombings of Iran rate a mention; if the SpaceX IPO had happened while she was writing it you can bet that would have been included as well). Occasionally there's outright rage at some of the outrageousness, but mostly the animals just relate it; they have questions, but come up against the practical impossibility of really questioning it. All this gives a crystal-clear enough picture of the modern-day capitalist-financial system and its instruments, institutions, and machinations, and the abuses it so readily allows.
There's little way to oppose it all -- a pig, for example, noting: "Wer sagt die Wahrheit, die aber sowieso nicht zählt ?" ('Who tells the truth -- which doesn't matter anyway ?') It's a frustration that crops up repeatedly:
Zum Verstand führt keine gerade Straße, die wurde bei zahllosen Unwettern weggeschwemmt. Warum also erst eine bauen ?The monologues are torrents of words -- and of wordplay, Jelinek seeming to use all the the double- (or multiple- ...) meanings of every word whenever she can. The prose -- and arguments -- are dense, rhythmic, and serpentine. If not outright overwhelming, it certainly leaves the reader staggering, trying to keep up. One advantage of reading the text, rather than seeing it on stage, is that readers can tackle it bit by bit, section by section, as these are often small wholes within the larger one; it is a text that it can be useful to step back from, to catch one's breath.
[There's no straight road to reason; it's been washed away by countless storms. So why even bother building one in the first place?]
The lack of back and forth, the fact that the play is almost entirely made up of longer monologues, means there is no real counter-force to Jelinek's forceful (and forcefully presented) arguments. But as harsh and dark as her judgments are here, it's hard to deny that she usually has a point, her presentation amusingly making clear just how much flim-flam (never mind inequity ...) there is to high finance.
Nothing about Unter Tieren is easy, and it is an odd text, whether read as a novel or, presumably, acted out on stage. Jelinek feels no need to make anything simple -- though arguably she takes the willful mystification to extremes at times. (This is a book in which the acknowledgements/thanks -- listing also works by Plato, Marx's Capital, and Carmen Losmann's 2020 film, Oeconomia -- begins: "Danke, zuerst Margery Allingham !" ('Thanks, first, to Margery Allingham !').)
The power of the language -- it's not to everyone's taste, but Jelinek undeniably has a way with words -- and the humor make Unter Tieren of some literary appeal (though, again: your mileage may vary re. this sort of thing); beyond that, it's hard not to be impressed by Jelinek's engagement with (or relentless pursuit of ...) the subject matter. It's easy to see this dividing readers between those who think it's brilliant (which, certainly, at the very least, bits and aspects of it are) and unreadable (which, um, also ...). Certainly of interest.
- M.A.Orthofer, 18 July 2026
- Return to top of the page -
Unter Tieren:
- Rowohlt publicity page
- Burgtheater production
- junge Welt (German)
- NDR (German)
- Die Presse (German)
- radio3 (German)
- See Index of German literature
- See Index of Drama books
- See Index of Books by Nobel laureates under review
- Return to top of the page -
Austrian author Elfriede Jelinek was born in 1946. She was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2004.
- Return to top of the page -
© 2026 the complete review
Main | the New | the Best | the Rest | Review Index | Links