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Elias Canetti[kunet´E] Pronunciation Key, 1905–94, English novelist and essayist, b. Ruschuk (now Ruse), Bulgaria. He came from a Sephardic Jewish background, spent most of his early years in Vienna, and, fleeing Nazism, emigrated to England before the outbreak of World War II. His most important works, all written in German, are the novel Auto-da-FE (1935, tr. 1946), a searing picture of a man as degraded and evil, and Crowds and Power (1960, tr. 1962), a study of mass psychology. He also wrote plays, autobiographical works, essays, and a study of Kafka. He was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1981.
See his reminiscences: The Tongue Set Free (1977, tr. 1979), The Torch in My Ear (1980, tr. 1982), and The Play of the Eyes (1985, tr. 1986); his notebooks (1998); study by R. Lawson (1991).
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