Three Plays

Although Elfriede Jelinek is an internationally recognized playwright, her plays are difficult to find in English, which makes this new volume all the more valuable. In Rechnitz , a chorus of messengers reports on the circumstances of the massacre of 180 Jews, an actual event that took place near the Austrian–Hungarian border town of Rechnitz. In The Merchant’s Contracts , Jelinek brings us a comedy of economics, where the babble and media spin of spectators leave small investors alienated and bearing the brunt of the economic crisis. And in Charges ( The Supplicants ), Jelinek responds to the immeasurable suffering among refugees fleeing death, destruction and political suppression, and asks what refugees want, how we as a society view them, and what political, moral and personal obligations they impose on us.