Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #853784 in Books
• Published on: 1995-10-19
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 432 pages

Synopsis
First published in 1935, this is the story of a distinguished scholar in Germany between the wars. It builds up the elements in the scholar himself, and in his personal relationships, which will lead to his destruction. The author won the 1981 Nobel Prize for Literature.

Customer Reviews

Auto Da Fe is, ostensibly, a modern morality play.
I still can't decide whether Auto Da Fe is the most nihilistic book I've ever read or one of the most humanistic. On one hand, Canetti treats his characters with unflinching (and, at times, comic, due to its extremity) brutality; they're all repugnant at best (lecherous murderers at worst), their desires are pitifully shallow, and, on the whole, they're painfully unintelligent. One might say that Canetti is the anti-Sherwood Anderson in this regard. Whereas the latter author strives to make the lives of his characters more significant through their "grotesqueness", the former uses said grotesqueness to render them less than human.
Despite all this, Canetti's humanism shines through due to the fact that Auto Da Fe is, ostensibly, a modern morality play. Human virtue would be rewarded, were there any to be found in the novel; as it stands, vice is clearly spelled out and its practitioners are punished. For instance, Canetti is obviously not suggesting that the reader should relate to or sympathize with the character of Peter Kein; he exists merely as an unfortunate example of intellectualism (and egoism) gone awry. At the same time, we shouldn't relish his downfall, but learn from it and apply its lesson (and the lessons of other characters) to our own lives. This is why it's hard for me to call Auto Da Fe nihilistic. While Canetti doesn't have much sympathy for fictional people, he seems to have boundless sympathy for the real ones which comprise his audience.

Also of note: earlier reviews have cited problems with the translation. This is absolutely not the case. Aside from a few errors here and there in grammar and tense, the novel reads very lucidly in English.

Terrible translation of a horrible story
I have to agree with one of the other reviewers who bemoaned the quality of the translation of this book. While I wouldn't quite describe it as 'unreadable' (because I read it), I will never know how much of my negative reaction to the book is due to the terrible quality of the language. It reads like it was translated by someone with a limited grasp of English using an English-German dictionary and translating one word at a time. Certain bits are barely in English at all.
Trying to put his to one side, I'm not sure that a perfect translation would have allowed me to enjoy this book. It is the story of Peter Kein, a misanthrope who loves books more than people. He is duped into marriage by his housekeeper and then thrown out of his own house, falling in with the petty criminal Fischerle (who longs to be world chess champion) and forming an alliance with Pfaff, the doorman of his building who sees women as nothing more than punchbags, and who has beaten his own wife and daughter into their graves. As Kein's mental health deteriorates his brother comes to rescue him, only to precipitate his final descent into madness.
There are no sympathetic characters here. Kein is an unpleasant idiot, his wife is an unpleasant idiot, Pfaff is a deeply unpleasant idiot. I could just about muster some sympathy for Fischerle and his dreams, but he is, all in all, an unpleasant idiot. The book is a tragic farce about the petty evils of these monstrous people, and I'm really not sure what Canetti wanted us to gain from reading it.
There is the odd interesting moment, unexpected flashes of magical realism. Overall, though, this was a painful and unpleasant read, and I have no idea why I persevered to the end. Don't read it, its not worth it.

One of Those Great "Single Novels"
Every now and then through the course of literary history, a writer produces a great book and retreats back into another aspect of their life; in Canetti's case, this retreat was into non-fiction and the intense work he put into his decades-in-the-making study CROWDS & POWER. In the mid 1930's, however, he produced this novel, DIE BLENDUNG (THE BLINDING; translated into English as AUTO-DA-FE [UK] and TOWER OF BABEL [US]). I love this book, possibly because I'm a bibliophile and can relate, in a sick and twisted way, to the protagonist covering up all of the windows and walls of his Berlin apartment with bookshelves. He is a misanthropic, bitter unhappy man who is a top researcher in Sinology. Then comes his housekeeper and an odd hunchbacked dwarf, and the rest is, well, simultaneously repulsive and hilarious. I can see where some would leave it in midstream but I loved it from beginning to end and thought Canetti did a great job conveying that classic battle between the isolationist and his all-invasive surroundings.