The Book Against Death

In 1937, Elias Canetti began collecting notes for the project�that `by definition, he could never live to complete', as�translator Peter Filkins writes in his afterword.�The Book�Against Death�is the work of a lifetime: a collection of�Canetti's aphorisms, diatribes, musings and commentaries�on and against death - published in English for the first�time since his death in 1994 - interspersed with material�from philosophers and writers including Goethe, Walter�Benjamin and Robert Walser. This major work by the 1981�Nobel Prize in Literature laureate is a disarming and often�darkly comic reckoning with the inevitability of death and�with its politicization, evoking despair at the loss of loved�ones and the impossibility of facing one's own death,�while fiercely protesting the mass deaths incurred during�war and the willingness of the despot to wield death as�power. Infused with fervour and vitality,�The Book Against�Death�ultimately forms a moving affirmation of the value�of life itself.