Point Of Books Auto-da-Fé
| Title | : | Auto-da-Fé |
| Author | : | Elias Canetti |
| Book Format | : | Paperback |
| Book Edition | : | Anniversary Edition |
| Pages | : | Pages: 464 pages |
| Published | : | December 1st 1984 by Farrar, Straus and Giroux (first published 1935) |
| Categories | : | Fiction. Classics. European Literature. German Literature. Literature |
Elias Canetti
Paperback | Pages: 464 pages Rating: 4.06 | 4536 Users | 382 Reviews
Explanation During Books Auto-da-Fé
"Auto-da-Fé" is the story of Peter Kien, a distinguished, reclusive sinologist living in Vienna between the wars. With masterly precision, Canetti reveals Kien's character, displaying the flawed personal relationships which ultimately lead to his destruction. Manipulated by his illiterate and grasping housekeeper, Therese, who has tricked him into marriage, and Benedikt Pfaff, a brutish concierge, Kien is forced out of his apartment - which houses his great library and one true passion - and into the underworld of the city. In this purgatory he is guided by a chess-playing dwarf of evil propensities, until he is eventually restored to his home. But on his return he is visited by his brother, an eminent psychiatrist who, by an error of diagnosis, precipitates the final crisis... "Auto-da-Fé" was first published in Germany in 1935 as "Die Blendung" ("The Blinding" or "Bedazzlement") and later in Britain in 1947, where the publisher noted Canetti as a 'writer of strongly individual genius, which may prove influential', an observation borne out when the author was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1981. "Auto-da-Fé" still towers as one of the greatest novels of the twentieth century, and Canetti's incisive vision of an insular man battling agianst the outside world is as fresh and rewarding today as when first it appeared in print.List Books In Favor Of Auto-da-Fé
| Original Title: | Die Blendung |
| ISBN: | 0374518793 (ISBN13: 9780374518790) |
| Edition Language: | English |
| Setting: | Vienna(Austria) |
Rating Of Books Auto-da-Fé
Ratings: 4.06 From 4536 Users | 382 ReviewsCritique Of Books Auto-da-Fé
If I wasn't cautioned by acts of a psychologist in this book trying to read the nature of intellectual in his theories; I could be disturbed to think that Canetti was only 26 when he wrote this masterpiece. There are books that are cynical about humanity and others that talk about how low humanity can fall. However, this book presents an entirely new level of the disturbing picture of humanity. Canetti offers no hope for humanity in here. Every single one of the characters are motivated by baseElias Canetti (1905-1994), a Bulgarian novelist and playwright, won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1981. He wrote several plays, a memoir in trilogy, several non-fiction works but only one novel, Auto-da-Fe. The way this is written, the term auto-da-fe must be Portuguese and it means the execution of non-believers during the Portuguese inquisition.However, Canetti wrote the novel in German and was first published in 1935. It is set in the decaying, cosmopolitan Vienna, where the young Canetti
It took some time for me to get through this--part of the reason is probably because I took it on vacation with me, and, really, who takes a book called Auto-de-Fé on vacation? Anyway, Canetti's style is a bit overwhelming sometimes, with the stream-of-conscious narration, but it wasn't impenetrable. No, that part seemed very realistic--his characters internalized the events happening around them and then churned them into a fantasy that most nearly correlated to their initial desires. That
This book is bizarre. Its like a Grimms fairy tale with insane characters, or a cautionary tale with a moral thats not a moral because its so nihilistic. This, Canetti seems to be saying, is what happens if an intellectual dissociates from the real world and hears no voice other than his own. He becomes dogmatic and he falls victim to the venality of the ignorant. Its sobering reading.To see my review (more of a summary really, as best I understood the book) please visit
This is the world as we know it - crazy as can be!It strikes me as strange that the English and German titles for this masterpiece are so different, and yet so fitting. Canetti, bilingual, multifaceted, a master of wordplay, must have delighted in the ambiguity. "Die Blendung", the German title, means "Deception", "Blinding"or "Delusion", whereas Auto-da-Fé, act of faith, refers to the horrible crimes of religious fanatics during the Inquisition.What happens if you believe blindly, and
Read More for Mental HealthThe literal translation of the German title of Auto da Fe is The Blinding, or perhaps more idiomatically, The Deception. The question this latter raises is: Who is deceiving whom? The unrelenting comic irony suggests that everyone is deceiving not only everyone else, but also themselves. All the characters are mad to some degree, and Kafkaesque to the extent that they emerge out of a somewhat hostile, vaguely Eastern European world in which they are striving to survive
A choice. Numberless made within the ordinary mayhem of a day. A person makes choices from the beginning to the end -scheme of their life. Peter Kien wants to spend the passing of his time, supported from the inheritance of his father's death, within the library of his own creation. Books instead of people. Facts and theories devised by those ideas argued by the greatest Sinologist in the world, himself. Life is to be defined by knowledge and study. While no one but his housekeeper sees or
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