[An] appalling noise of evil … roars through Auto-Da-Fé, and breaks the fabulous, symbolical intellect of [the protagonist] Pieter Kien.

The book is practically indescribable. It can only be read as a gigantic fable—of topical application, if you like, for never surely was it easier to find parallel in general, current life for the overthrow of reason in man by the forces of beastliness? Canetti wrote his books in Vienna about ten years ago, and it was published just before Vienna was overthrown by the Anschluss. It cannot be doubted that he was pressed to his particular theme by the universal doom being played out within hearing of us all; but he holds his frenzy down to one awful, legendary case. He simply shows us, in agonisingly slow detail, the destruction of the mad, pure mind of one man, a kind of genius, by one or two mindless...