Antiquarian and Classic Book Reviews
(July 25th, 1905 — August 14th, 1994)
Elias Canetti (Елиас Канети) was a Bulgarian-born German-language author. He won the 1981 Nobel Prize in Literature.
Canetti was born in Ruse, Bulgaria. He spent his childhood years there before the family moved to Britain to join a business established by Canetti’s uncles. When his father died suddenly, his mother moved the family to Vienna. He was seven at the time.
Living in Vienna, he was fluent in German (the language his mother insisted on using), Ladino (his native language), Bulgarian, English, and some French. He lived in Zürich and Frankfurt before he graduated high school. He earned a chemistry degree at the University of Vienna, but never worked as a chemist.
He was accidentally present at the July Revolt of 1924, which left a deep impression on him. His most famous work, Auto-da-Fé, explores mob mentality. He published two books before fleeing the Nazis. From 1934 until the 1970s, he lived in Britain.
Canetti was married twice and had one daughter. After the 1970s, he continued to travel, but spent most of the remainder of his life living in Zürich. During his career, he wrote more than twenty novels, essays, and memoirs.
Elias Canetti is a book author.
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This is a book that primarily about people and about parties, with descriptions of them that are at once acidic and amusing, and can also be seen as an extensive critique of English society at this moment in history. This is a review of Elias Canetti’s Party in the Blitz (Party im Blitz).
