It’s become almost a tradition for the Nobel literature recipient to be someone who wasn’t even on the critical radar screen at the moment, and so it is with Elfriede Jelinek. And yet, “Ms. Jelinek fits a more familiar pattern. She is the seventh European literature laureate in the past decade. The academy has also again shown a preference for literature with a political echo. As with several recent winners, including last year’s, J. M. Coetzee, a critic of South Africa’s apartheid government, Ms. Jelinek has used her literary work as a form of political engagement.”