埃爾夫麗德·耶利內剋，1946年10月20日生於奧地利的米爾茨楚施拉格一個有捷剋猶太血統的傢庭。自幼開始學習鋼琴、管風琴和長笛，後進入維也納音樂學院就讀。1964年畢業後，進入維也納大學學習戲劇和藝術史。1971年在維也納大學獲得管風琴碩士學位。70年代初，她輾轉柏林、羅馬等地。1974年與戈特弗裏德·許恩斯貝格結婚，居住在慕尼黑和維也納。耶利內剋很早就開始寫詩，1967年齣版詩集《麗莎的影子》。1970年發錶諷刺小說《寶貝，我們是誘餌》。此後寫下瞭大量的小說、戲劇、散文和詩歌作品。代錶作是帶有自傳成分的《鋼琴教師》。主要作品有長篇小說《女情人們》(1975)、《鋼琴教師》(1983)、《欲》(1989)、《死者的孩子們》(1995)、《貪婪》(2000)，戲劇《剋拉拉S》(1981)、《城堡戲劇》(1985)、《在阿爾卑斯山上》(2002)、《死亡與少女I—V》(2002)等。

她先後獲得過海因利希·伯爾奬、施蒂利亞州文學奬、格奧爾格·畢希納奬等許多奬項，2004年榮膺諾貝爾文學奬。

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.