The Book Against Death - Elias Canetti, Fitzcarraldo Editions

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