Party in the Blitz

ISBN: 0811218309

Author: Canetti, Elias

Condition: New

Nobel Prize winner Elias Canettis sensational memoir: a frank, acerbic, and cranky way his years of British exile. Elias Canetti originally intended Party in the Blitz to capture an image of his time in post-war London. Well known throughout Europe, Canetti scorned British intellectuals who werent familiar with his work. By force of will alone he accumulated English followers, but not before being christened the godmonster of Hampstead. Canettis memories of various people in his social circle are brief and scathing brimstone sketches. T.S. Eliot, Iris Murdoch, Wittgenstein, Herbert Read, Bertrand Russell-Canetti rakes them all over the coals. To Canetti, T.S. Eliot was nothing more than an American emigrant trying desperately to act British, and Canettis portrayal of Iris Murdoch, with whom he had an affair, is nothing short of brutal. Michael Hofmanns translation pulls no punches, delivering the goods on Canettis searing injection: when you write down your life, every page should contain something no one has ever heard about.