Crowds and Power

‘Marvellous … an immensely interesting, often profound reflection about the nature of society, in particular the nature of violence.’
— Susan Sontag

‘One of our great imaginers and solitary men of genius.’
— Iris Murdoch

‘Canetti led his life without compromise, fear, or guilt, and [reading him is] like discovering, without warning, a complex and satisfying work of art.’
— David Denby, New Yorker

‘Canetti invites – indeed, compels – judgement. His exacting presence honours literature.’
— George Steiner, New Yorker

‘The erudition is genuinely awe-inspiring.’
— Salman Rushdie

‘Before there was the mysterious W. G. Sebald, there was the even more mysterious Elias Canetti’
— Clive James, New York Times

‘[A] magisterial work by a polyhistor who knows how to reveal an overwhelmingly large number of viewpoints of men’s behaviour as mass beings.’
— Swedish Academy, Nobel Prize in Literature 1981

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, and The Play of the Eyes; the novel Auto-da-Fé; and the non-fiction book Crowds and Power.

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