The third volume of Canetti’s memoirs finds him in Vienna between 1931 and 1937: finishing Auto-da-Fé, trying to establish himself as a writer, and moving through a brilliant cultural world that sits beneath the shadow of fascism.

Robert Musil, Hermann Broch, Alban Berg, Anna Mahler as fiercely observed personalities—vain, magnetic, absurd, generous or predatory according to the moment. Their identities are revealed through glances, gestures and little contests of attention they hold with one another and the people around them.

Originally written in German and translated by Ralph Manheim, we see Canetti as a brilliant portraitist and an unreliable sovereign of his own past: exact about other people’s weaknesses, rather less eager to examine his own. That tension gives the memoir its peculiar charge. It is an excellent book for readers interested in interwar Vienna, modernist literary circles, cultural vanity and the way catastrophe can remain simultaneously obvious and unreal to those approaching it. 

Picador paperback, 1991, translated from the German by Ralph Manheim. Good condition with moderate rubbing and handling wear, light edge wear, a creased upper corner and a small ink mark to the front cover.