The Book Against Death

About Elias Canetti

Elias Canetti was born in 1905 into a Sephardi Jewish family in Ruse Bulgaria. He moved to Vienna in 1924 where he became involved in literary circles while studying for a degree in chemistry. He remained in Vienna until the Anschluss when he emigrated to England and later to Switzerland where he died in 1994. In 1981 Canetti was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature for writings marked by a broad outlook a wealth of ideas and artistic power. His best-known works include his trilogy of memoirs The Tongue Set Free The Torch in My Ear The Play of the Eyes and The Party in the Blitz; the novel Auto-da-Fé; and the nonfiction book Crowds and Power. Peter Filkins is the translator of Ingeborg Bachmanns collected poems Darkness Spoken as well as three novels by H. G. Adler The Journey Panorama and The Wall. He published a biography H. G. Adler: A Life in Many Worlds in 2019. Filkinss fifth collection of poems Water / Music appeared in 2021. He teaches at Bard College. Joshua Cohen was born in 1980 in Atlantic City. He was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for fiction 2022 for The Netanyahus: An Account of a Minor and Ultimately Even Negligible Episode in the History of a Very Famous Family. He lives in New York City.