Elias Canetti - Auto-da-Fe (1984)

Elias Canetti (trans. C. V. Wedgwood) - Auto-da-Fé (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1984).

ISBN: 9780374518790 | 468 pages | PDF

Auto-da-Fé, Elias Canetti's only work of fiction, is a staggering achievement that puts him squarely in the ranks of modern European writers such as Robert Musil and Hermann Broch. Published in 1946, the book did not become widely known until after the worldwide success of Canetti's Crowds and Power (1960).

It is the story of Peter Kien, a middle-aged scholarly recluse who lives among and for his great library. The fall of Kien through the instrument of the illiterate, brutish housekeeper he marries constitutes the plot of the book. Ultimately, his marriage -- intended to protect both himself and his library -- destroys them instead, in the conflagration alluded to by the English-language title.

The best writers of our time have been concerned with the horror of the modern world -- one thinks of Kafka, to whom Canetti has often been compared. But Auto-da-Fé stands as a completely original, unforgettable treatment of the modern predicament.

About the Author: Elias Canetti (1905-1994) was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1981. His writings include a monumental work of social theory, Crowds and Power, and three volumes of memoirs, The Tongue Set Free, The Torch in My Ear, and The Play of the Eyes.


Reviews

"In Auto-da-Fé no one is spared. Professor and furniture salesman, doctor, housekeeper, and thief all get it in the neck. The remoreseless quality of the comedy builds one of the most terrifying literary worlds of the century." -- Salman Rushdie

"Savage, subtle, beautifully mysterious -- one of the few great novels of the century." -- Iris Murdoch

"A strange, eloquent and terrifying book." -- Philip Toynbee

"There is nothing discreet, chaste, or high minded about the finest and wildest of all fictions." -- Jonathan Spence