Auto-da-Fé (novel)
Auto da Fé (original title Die Blendung, "The Blinding") is a 1935 novel by Elias Canetti; the title of the English translation (by C. V. Wedgwood, Jonathan Cape, Ltd, 1946) refers to the burning of heretics by the Inquisition. The first American edition of Wedgewood's translation was titled The Tower of Babel (Alfred A. Knopf, 1947). Publication history The book manuscript was finished in 1931, and the book was published in 1935, by Herbert Reichner in Vienna (Canetti's home at that time). It is Canetti's first publication. In 1943 Canetti got an offer to publish the book in English with Jonathan Cape, but it was decided to delay publication until after the war. It was eventually released in 1946. The book did not become widely known until after the worldwide success of Canetti's Crowds and Power (1960). Jonathan Spence observes that "there is nothing discreet, chaste, or high minded about the finest and wildest of all fictions that centre on a student of China, Canetti's Auto-da-fe." Plot and themes The novel is a dark and disorienting tale of the self-destructive character of totalitarian thinking. A writer for the Spectator described it as: "Appalling, magnificent ... [It] screams and bellows of