It's a little dismaying that I'd never even heard of Elfriede Jelinek, winner of this year's Nobel for lit. But a quick look around the web suggests that almost nobody (speaking English, that is) knows anything about her. There seems to be plenty in the way of German resources, but unfortunately I don't have any German, and therefore can't bring them to you.
There are books in translation, though, and based on the descriptions Amazon has, her work sounds fascinating. This page calls her "the younger counterpart of Austrian playwright Thomas Bernhard" who's one of my favorite authors, albeit largely for stylistic reasons that probably aren't the basis for the comparison. It sounds like she fits squarely in a postmodern tradition, perhaps moreso than any other Nobel winner we've seen. From the Nobel Academy: "The nature of Jelinek's texts is often hard to define. They shift between prose and poetry, incantation and hymn, they contain theatrical scenes and filmic sequences." Of course, if "filmic sequences" aren't enough for you, there's always this actual film.
UPDATE: In the time it took me to write this post, someone added a Wikipedia entry.
MORE: This article in the Chronicle (which may not be available to non-subscribers, I can never tell) describes some of her recent work as "a kind of polyphonic monologues that do not serve to delineate roles but to permit voices from various levels of the psyche and history to be heard simultaneously." Notwithstanding my comment above, this sounds very much like Bernhard. I'll let you know for sure once I've actually read something...
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