Books dominate the world of the eccentric bibliophile and self-proclaimed "greatest living sinologist," Peter Kien. Kien has no sense of reality; instead, he leads a bizarre, cave-like existence in his four-room apartment, surrounded by a library of 25,000 works. In his mind, the scholarly texts engage in dialogue with one another. He avoids genuine conversations with other people.

When he notices how meticulously his housekeeper, Therese, dusts his books every day, he is so touched that he spontaneously decides to marry her. But on their very first wedding night, Therese, in an attempt to seduce Kien, disrupts his order with a single gesture. Did she deliberately knock the stack of books off his sofa? Kien's autistic mental construct begins to crumble, and his system for survival starts to descend into chaos.

Under the influence of the rising National Socialism, Elias Canetti wrote his only novel, "Auto-da-Fé," for which he received the Nobel Prize in 1981, decades later. The unempathetic Peter Kien, the avaricious Therese, her brutal lover Pfaff, and the con man Fischerle can all be interpreted as contemporaries of a social upheaval and a new order.

With great musicality, the tools of the grotesque, and the unique interplay of actors and puppets, the multi-award-winning director and puppeteer Nikolaus Habjan creates his theatrical worlds. For many years, his productions have artistically explored Austrian contemporary history and autocratic social structures. The renowned writer and psychiatrist Paulus Hochgatterer was commissioned to dramatize Canetti's novel.

(Source: josefstadt.org)