The Book Against Death

Title: The Book Against Death
Author: Joshua Canetti, Elias; Filkins, Peter; Cohen
ISBN: 9780811237994
Publisher: New Directions
Published: 2024
Binding: Paperback
Language: English
Number of Pages: 432
Condition Note: New from the publisher
Publisher Description:

The Book Against Death is the work of a lifetime: a collection of Elias Canetti's powerful, disarming, and often bleakly comic observations, diatribes, musings, and commentaries on and against death. Evoking despair, melancholy, and fury, Canetti examines the inevitable demise of all beings--from the ant, the fish, and the worm to an executioner, a court painter, and a Greek god--while fiercely protesting the mass deaths incurred during war and the willingness of the despot to wield death as power. Interspersed with material from philosophers and writers such as Goethe, Walter Benjamin, and Robert Walser, The Book Against Death is ultimately a moving affirmation of the value of life itself.

Canetti famously refused to die before he'd read all his obituaries and corrected them.

"I accept no death."--Elias Canetti (1905-1994)