The novel ends with the protagonist going crazy and killing himself via the title act of self-immolation.
Hilarity ensues in this work after a fat ugly hag attempts to seduce a furniture salesman in the showroom of his shop by taking off her skirt and tackling him. The protagonist has a nightmare in which two Mexican priests disguised as jaguars sacrifice him on an altar, and he later becomes convinced that his wife's extreme greed has led her to forgo shopping for food in favor of cannibalizing herself. He is later swindled at a pawn shop known as the "Therisianum" by four friends of a deranged hunchbacked dwarf who dreams of becoming the world chess champion and who is later viciously murdered by one of his slutty wife's lovers. The protagonist is attacked and imprisoned by his sadistic landlord, Benedikt Pfaff, but he is rescued by his brother George, who pays the protagonist's wife Therese to leave him alone with his library of 25,000 books. The novel ends with the protagonist going crazy and killing himself via the title act of self-immolation. For ten points name this novel about the sinologist Peter Kien by Elias Canetti. 
Hilarity ensues in this work after a fat ugly hag attempts to seduce a furniture salesman in the showroom of his shop by taking off her skirt and tackling him.
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