Elias Canetti
Paperback | Pages: 464 pages Rating: 4.06 | 4536 Users | 382 Reviews
Describe Based On Books Auto-da-Fé
| Title | : | Auto-da-Fé |
| Author | : | Elias Canetti |
| Book Format | : | Paperback |
| Book Edition | : | Deluxe 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 |
Narrative To 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.Particularize Books Concering Auto-da-Fé
| Original Title: | Die Blendung |
| ISBN: | 0374518793 (ISBN13: 9780374518790) |
| Edition Language: | English |
| Setting: | Vienna(Austria) |
Rating Based On Books Auto-da-Fé
Ratings: 4.06 From 4536 Users | 382 ReviewsCommentary Based On Books Auto-da-Fé
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. ThatI was attracted to Canetti by a Sontag essay I read about him a while back. It takes generously from the ideas of Hesse and, to a lesser extent, Kafka, confronting the troubles of the alienated modern man in grand, mid-century Germanic fashion. Two primary flaws: first, it drags a bit at times, especially in the middle, and second, for a novel so heavily reliant on symbol, the symbolism is a bit heavy-handed, without the grace that Dostoyevsky and Bely endow their symbolist novels. Still, I
A bookseller is a king, and a king cannot be a bookseller.Can one carry along a huge library in one's head? The protagonist of Auto-da-Fé surely can.And when the abstract intellect collides with the dull routine of reality both become shattered into nothingness.This grand cynically modernistic novel easily comes among my top ten of favourites in literature.If ones consciousness is in conflict with reality what should be changed: ones consciousness or reality? Blindness is a weapon against time
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 base
Since you are at goodreads.com, you're most likely a bookworm (unless you're one of the thousands of juveniles here who pretend they like to read only to get to know people they can hook up with). But how bookworm of a bookworm are you? If you're at least the type who would feel sad leaving a bookstore without getting to buy a book, then reading this novel would, at times, be just like staring at a mirror. You can see you here.Winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1981, Elias Canetti, a
Basically the complete opposite of what I enjoy in a novel.But then I haven't won a Nobel Prize for Literature, have I.
The absurdity of man. A theme which has been emptied onto thousands and thousands of pages by just as many authors. And to this day, the one book I've read which has given me the most haunting and darkly humorous experience of it, is Auto-da-Fé. This book is bizarre. At some parts, the misanthropic bibliophile and main character Peter Kien read almost like a parody of myself. This was both funny and frightening, much like the rest of the book. There is a continuous tug of war going on in the
0 Comments