China will publish The Piano Teacher by Elfriede Jelinek, recently named the winner of the 2004 Nobel Prize in literature, in simplified Chinese characters within a month, according to Beijing October Art Publishing House on Saturday.

The Piano Teacher, which was written in 1983 by Elfriede, is a semi-autobiographical novel about a unique love affair between a female piano teacher and her handsome young student.

Although the novel has not been published on the Chinese mainland, some Chinese are familiar with the story from the movie adaptation, which won a number of awards in the 2001 Cannes Film Festival.

Hired by the Beijing October Art Publishing House, Chinese translators Ning Ying and Zheng Huahan completed the translation of The Piano Teacher in the year 2000. But the translated work was not published on the Chinese mainland, because the publishing house worried that Chinese readers might not accept the novel's open depiction of deviant sexual psychology.

At the publishers insistence, the novel's Chinese edition has been revised several times.

The publishing house promised recently that the Chinese version will maintain the content of the original work "as much as possible."

The novel was published in Taiwan in complex Chinese characters in October, 2003.
 
(Xinhua News Agency October 10, 2004)