Elias Canetti - Read Free From Internet

Auto-Da-Fé

Wed, 14 Sep 1977 21:47:48 +0300

"Auto-da-Fé" is the story of Peter Kien, a distinguished, reclusive sinologist living in Germany 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.

The Torch in my Ear

Fri, 31 Oct 1980 17:31:14 +0300

The Torch in My Ear is the account of Canetti's young manhood, of his arrival in Vienna in the early 1920s, of his schooling, and of the beginning of his life as a writer.

Notes from Hampstead

Mon, 31 Oct 1994 17:31:21 +0200

Notes from Hampstead is a map of the late Nobel laureate's thinking, a triumphant compendium of aphoristic, enigmatic, and expository writings covering a characteristically diverse range of subjects.

"Canetti is a meticulous writer, and in reading his notes, one can easily see him hovering over a just formed sentence, pencil in hand, wondering whether to cut or to add or to leave well enough alone." - Publishers Weekly

The Tongue Set Free

Wed, 31 Oct 1990 17:31:19 +0300

Winner of the 1981 Nobel Prize, this first volume of the author's autobiography provides a searching portrait of his personal background and creative development.
Elias Canetti was one of the major intellectual figures and polymaths of the twentieth century. A master of many genres, he is known especially for his novel, Auto-da-Fe, and his great work of social theory, Crowds and Power. But Canetti's genius is perhaps nowhere more evident than in the three volumes of his autobiography.
This first volume, Tongue Set Free, provides a searching portrait of the author's personal background and creative development as it presents the events, personalities (especially Canetti's mother), and intellectual forces that shaped the growth of the artist as a young man.

The Play of the Eyes

Wed, 31 Oct 1990 17:31:17 +0300

"The third volume of his acclaimed autobiographical memoirs, The Play of the Eyes ambles along unpredictably, mingling character sketches, cafe conversations, dramatic readings of his plays, trips to Prague and Strasbourg, musings on the power of crowds and what makes the good man ... Canetti uses a dramatist's gifts here to achieve emotional depth; his mother's death, sketched simply against the backdrop of a crumbling Europe, takes on a tragic dignity." - Publishers Weekly

Agony of Flies

Sat, 31 Oct 1992 17:31:18 +0200

Agony of Flies: Notes and Notations presents brief aphorisms selected from the German Nobel laureate Elias Canetti's writings.

These short writings collected in this bilingual edition offer remarkable insight into the life and thinking of "one of our great imaginers and solitary men of genius" (Iris Murdoch).

The Secret Heart of the Clock

Sat, 31 Oct 1987 17:31:15 +0300

From one of the preeminent intellectual figures of the twentieth century, a highly personal testimonial of what Canetti himself chooses to term "notations," bits and pieces: notes, aphorisms, fragments. Taken together, they present an awesomely tender, guiltily gloomy meditation on death and aging.
" A mosaical portrait of an old body's mind determined to do its exercises and not lose a step—and fascinating for that." - Kirkus Reviews