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Re: Auto da Fe

From:     Eva
Category: Books
Date:     29 August 2006
Time:     02:34 PM

Review:

One of my favourite books. Canetti pulls the reader in straight away with an innocent conversation between a scholar and a young 
boy in front of a bookshop. As the boy runs off to school the tone suddenly goes sideways as Peter Kien, the scholar and 
protagonist, weighs up whether he was rash to waste his time talking to the boy. Being shown the world through Kien’s eyes is an 
addictive agony, like watching an accident in slow motion. Canetti brilliantly adds layers onto the fatal mix of faulty logic, 
arrogance and inability communicate with other people to create a really gripping and hilarious novel. 


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