professor peter kien

Imaginary literary portrait based on
Elias Canetti's novel - Auto da Fe. Summary of the novel below -
'...the book deals with the dangers inherent in believing that rigid, dissociated intellectualism and detached, dogmatic scholarship can prevail over evil, chaos, and destruction.
Set in Vienna and Paris, the novel tells the story of Peter Kien, an internationally respected scholar of Chinese studies who maintains a personal library of 25,000 volumes. After dreaming that the books are burned, Kien marries his housekeeper Therese, believing that she will preserve his beloved library should disaster befall him.
Therese throws him out of his book-filled apartment, however, and Kien, now homeless, enters the grotesque underworld of the city. Delusional, he fluctuates between horrifying hallucinations and an unspeakable reality.
Kien's disintegration finally leads him to set fire to his precious books and to await his own death in the ensuing inferno.'

Canetti won Nobel Prize for literature in 1981.