Gaming Instinct

Gaming Instinct (German: Spieltrieb) is a 2004 novel by the German writer Juli Zeh. The story is set in a private high school in Bonn, where an intellectual precocious girl and a classmate play a sexual prank on a teacher.

Gaming Instinct
First edition
AuthorJuli Zeh
Original titleSpieltrieb
CountryGermany
LanguageGerman
PublisherSchöffling & Co.
Publication date
30 September 2004
Pages565
ISBN3-89561-056-9

Reception

Die Zeit's reviewer placed the novel in a tradition of "German student tragedies" such as Frank Wedekind's Spring Awakening and Hermann Hesse's Beneath the Wheel. The critic compared the language to Robert Musil, and wrote: "It is astonishing, it is admirable, how the only 30-year-old writer, with a well-trained language for all horses and a highly educated ingenuity, races her story through more than 500 pages across the finish line, a story, which couldn't have been more uneasy.[1] Uwe Wittstock of Die Welt found the novel tiresome and unoriginal. He compared its ideas to "commercial reports about the 'youth of today'", and wrote that "at the same time the novel's motif of 'blackmail with compromising photos' strikes me as about as corny as that of the forged letters in novels and plays from the 18th century."[2] The novel received the Per Olov Enquist Award and the Prix Cévennes for Best European Novel.[3]

See also

References
  1. Staff writer (2004). "Das Zeitalter der Fische". Die Zeit (in German). Retrieved 2012-01-17. Juli Zehs Buch steht in der Tradition deutscher Schülertragödien"; "Es ist erstaunlich, es ist bewundernswert, wie die gerade mal dreißig Jahre alte Schriftstellerin auf sämtlichen Pferden einer durchtrainierten Sprache und eines hoch gebildeten Scharfsinns ihre Geschichte über 500 Seiten durchs Ziel jagt, eine Geschichte, wie sie ungemütlicher nicht sein kann.
  2. Wittstock, Uwe (2004-10-02). "Adas Verwirrungen". Die Welt (in German). Retrieved 2012-01-17. handelsüblichen Reportagen über die 'Jugend von heute'"; "das Romanmotiv 'Erpressung wegen kompromittierenden Fotos' erscheint mir inzwischen ungefähr so abgedroschen wie das der gefälschten Briefe in den Romanen und Theaterstücken des 18. Jahrhunderts.
  3. "Juli Zeh – Gaming Instinct". schoeffling.de. Schöffling & Co. Archived from the original on 2012-02-24. Retrieved 2012-01-17.
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