Rating: 
Summary: A strangely purifying book
Review: I sympathize with the people who wrote bad reviews: this is not a book for many, many people. If you value reading books that seem to take place in the same world that we live in, with plausible human beings who act in ways that make quick sense - stay away. If you prefer to avoid the grotesque, the violent, and the disturbing, this book is also probably not for you.None of these things, however, have anything to do with whether a book is good or not. A few people have said that Canetti's prose is difficult to understand: that is nonsense. You are allowed not to like this book, but if you can't comprehend prose of such clarity, the problem is yours, not the author's. The book reads like a hallucination, but the lines of the image are sharp, like Kafka's. Someone else wrote that the book is a glimpse into the mind of a psychotic: this is also not true. The world that the author describes may be insane, but the characters all live and think with a strange internal logic that is completely coherent with their environment. A character deciding to become immobile to fend off the corrupting presence of his wife seems, here, to be a perfectly appropriate response. In this world, it makes sense; in our world, it does not, and if you like reading books that breathe the same air as you, don't bother with Auta da Fe. But if you can accept this world, which is at a very disturbing angle to our own, then you will live through a strangely purifying experience. I can't explain why it happens, but encountering the horrible and comic events of this book, the greed and blindness of the characters, leaves you better in some way: freer of ambition and stupid vanities. Read it: you'll see what I mean.
Rating:
Summary: Literally Frightening
Review: On reading this, one can easily see why Canetti won the Nobel Prize. This is one of the most gripping novels I've read; every chapter is wrought with the tension that provides a basis for the entire work. I recommend this very highly.
Rating:
Summary: World-class literature of the highest order
Review: One of the greatest novels of this century, this is a book you will not forget. It is a true masterpiece written, astonishingly, by a man hardly 25 years old. Chillingly prophetic, it is also stylistically of an overpowering beauty. A work of genius, ranking alongside the best of such giants as Kafka, Flaubert, or Dostoyevsky. It is a breathtaking descent into the darkness not only of an individual soul, but of a tormented century. It is Canetti's greatest triumph
Rating:
Summary: The most phenomenal book of the century
Review: Peter Kien explores the innermost horror of his mind. He lives in a land of books until his solitude is invaded by the blue skirt - the horror of worldly feminity. He is forced out of his secure environment into the fear of the city. Canetti wrote the novel after seeing the University of Vienna in flames. He saw a man outside the university, unconcerned for those burning inside, crying "my papers, my papers". He saw Peter Kien. He saw humanity, civilisation. After this, the most astonishing of novels, he concerned himself with the study of crowds and the politics of crowds. On Brecht he said, "an overbearing man!"
Rating: 
Summary: Falling short of expectations
Review: The characters are stereotypical, and the dialogues lack power. The languge is remarkably barren... Although this book follows the tradition of Kafka, Nabokov, and Dostoevsky, in my opinion, it cannot appear on the same list.
Rating: 
Summary: Difficult
Review: What is it like to go mad? What is really going on in a psychotic's mind? I don't know from experience(I hope) but vicariously felt what it may be like through this book. The description of what is actually going on in the plot, and how it is understood by the main character, felt very understandable. Reading this book is no picnic, but it is unforgettable and poignant.
Rating: 
Summary: madness visited
Review: What is it like to go mad? What is really going on in a psychotic's mind? I don't know from experience(I hope) but vicariously felt what it may be like through this book. The description of what is actually going on in the plot, and how it is understood by the main character, felt very understandable. Reading this book is no picnic, but it is unforgettable and poignant.
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