Canetti's only novel tells of Peter Kien, a sinologist so devoted to his private library that he can no longer function in the human world. His housekeeper manipulates him; his brother exploits him; the mob arrives. The novel is a satire on intellectual isolation and a prophecy of fascism, written in Vienna between 1930 and 1931, published in 1935, then forgotten until the 1960s. Canetti won the Nobel Prize in 1981 partly on its strength. The title refers to the burning of heretics. The book is about a different kind of burning.