Elias Canetti

Manipulated by his illiterate and grasping housekeeper who has tricked him into marriage and a brutish concierge, Peter Kien is forced out of his apartment – which houses his great library and one true passion – and into the underworld of the city.

The story follows a reclusive academic who lives in a world of books and ideas. When he marries his illiterate housekeeper, it is believed he is taking advantage of her, but her own secret power tilts their relationship in strange and unexpected directions.