''Gaming Instinct'' (german: Spieltrieb) is a 2004 novel by the German writer
Juli Zeh
Juli Zeh (, Julia Barbara Finck, née Zeh; born 30 June 1974 in Bonn) is a German writer and former judge.
Biography
Her first book was ''Adler und Engel'' (translated into English as ''Eagles and Angels'' by Christine Slenczka), which won the ...
. The story is set in a private high school in
Bonn
The federal city of Bonn ( lat, Bonna) is a city on the banks of the Rhine in the German state of North Rhine-Westphalia, with a population of over 300,000. About south-southeast of Cologne, Bonn is in the southernmost part of the Rhine-Ruhr r ...
, where an intellectual precocious girl and a classmate play a sexual prank on a teacher.
Reception
''
Die Zeit
''Die Zeit'' (, "The Time") 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 ...
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 de ...
's ''
Spring Awakening'' and
Hermann Hesse
Hermann Karl Hesse (; 2 July 1877 – 9 August 1962) was a German-Swiss poet, novelist, and painter. His best-known works include ''Demian'', ''Steppenwolf (novel), Steppenwolf'', ''Siddhartha (novel), Siddhartha'', and ''The Glass Bead Game'', ...
's ''
Beneath the Wheel
''Beneath the Wheel'' (''Unterm Rad'') is a 1906 novel written by Hermann Hesse. In 1957 it was reissued as ''The Prodigy'', in the Peter Owen Publishers translation. It severely criticizes education that focuses only on students' academic perf ...
''. 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'' (german: link=no, Der Mann ohne Eigenschaften), is generally considered to be one of the most important ...
, 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
''Die Welt'' ("The World") is a German national daily newspaper, published as a broadsheet by A