The Book Against Death

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