''Gaming Instinct'' () is a 2004 novel by the German writer
Juli Zeh
Juli Zeh (, Julia Barbara Finck, née Zeh; born 30 June 1974) is a German writer and judge. She is known for novels such as '' The Method'' (2009), '' Unterleuten'' (2016) and '' About People'' (2021).
Early life and education
Juli Zeh is the da ...
. The story is set in a private high school in
Bonn
Bonn () is a federal city in the German state of North Rhine-Westphalia, located on the banks of the Rhine. With a population exceeding 300,000, it lies about south-southeast of Cologne, in the southernmost part of the Rhine-Ruhr region. This ...
. Intellectually precocious girl Ada and new classmate Alef band together through their mutual interest in
Game theory
Game theory is the study of mathematical models of strategic interactions. It has applications in many fields of social science, and is used extensively in economics, logic, systems science and computer science. Initially, game theory addressed ...
and apply it by blackmailing a teacher into a sexual relationship with her.
Reception
''
Die Zeit
(, ) is a German national weekly newspaper published in Hamburg in Germany. The newspaper is generally considered to be among the German newspapers of record and is known for its long and extensive articles.
History
The first edition of was ...
s reviewer placed the novel in a tradition of "German student tragedies" such as
Frank Wedekind
Benjamin Franklin Wedekind (July 24, 1864 – March 9, 1918) was a German playwright. His work, which often criticizes bourgeois attitudes (particularly towards sex), is considered to anticipate expressionism and was influential in the developme ...
's ''
Spring Awakening'' and
Hermann Hesse
Hermann Karl Hesse (; 2 July 1877 – 9 August 1962) was a Germans, German-Swiss people, Swiss poet and novelist, and the 1946 Nobel Prize in Literature laureate. His interest in Eastern philosophy, Eastern religious, spiritual, and philosophic ...
's ''
Beneath the Wheel''. The critic compared the language to
Robert Musil
Robert Musil (; 6 November 1880 – 15 April 1942) was an Austrian philosophical writer. His unfinished novel, ''The Man Without Qualities'' (), is generally considered to be one of the most important and influential modernist novels.
Family
M ...
, 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. Uwe Wittstock of ''
Die Welt
(, ) is a German national daily newspaper, published as a broadsheet by Axel Springer SE.
is the flagship newspaper of the Axel Springer publishing group and it is considered a newspaper of record in Germany. Its leading competitors are the ...
'' 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." The novel received the Per Olov Enquist Award and the Prix Cévennes for Best European Novel.
See also
*
2004 in literature
This article contains information about the literary events and publications of 2004.
Events
*January
**The poet Jang Jin-sung, in trouble with the North Korean authorities, defects to South Korea.
**The Richard & Judy Book Club is launched ...
*
German literature
German literature () comprises those literature, literary texts written in the German language. This includes literature written in Germany, Austria, the German parts of Switzerland and Belgium, Liechtenstein, Luxembourg, South Tyrol in Italy ...
References
External links
''Gaming Instinct''at the publisher's website
{{Authority control
2004 German novels
German-language novels
Novels by Juli Zeh
Novels set in Bonn
Novels set in high schools and secondary schools