Knopf, New York, 1946. Cloth. First US Edition.
427pp: A very nice copy of Canetti's first and perhaps best known book. It was first published in Vienna in 1935 and almost immediately suppressed. It resurfaced immediately after the war in in the UK (translated at Auto-da-F?) and US (under another title, the present edition), and was acclaimed by important writers and novelists, but Canetti's work did not really reach a broader public until the 1960s when the novel was republished (and of course after being awarded the Nobel Prize in 1981). The idea of this novel came from Canetti's meetings with Brecht, Grosz and Isaak Babel in Berlin in 1928; it recounts the incerasing madness of Peter Klein, a middle-aged philologist and sinologis, who has withdrawn into his library of 25,000 books and behind his knowledge of 40,000 Chinese characters. His housekeeper/wife and his apartment building caretaker (a proto-Fascist), robs him of everything, leaving Klein prey to the lower, surrealistic depths of society. and an apocalyptic death by his own hand. The novel is cited as one forecasting the sort of society which was then looming over Austria and Central Europe. A fine/very fine copy without signature, bookplates or marks; dustjacket shows almost no edgewear. Fine. Fine.

[Item #17831]