Tower of Babel

Elias Canetti was born in Rustschuk, Bulgaria on July 25, 1905 into a Sephardic Jewish family. He was educated in Germany, Switzerland, and Austria and received a Ph.D. in chemistry from the University of Vienna in 1929. He wrote novels and plays in German. His works explored the emotions of crowds, the psychopathology of power, and the position of the individual at odds with the society around him. His novels include Auto-da- Fé and Masse und Macht. His plays include Hochzeit, Komödie der Eitelkeit, and Die Befristeten. He also published excerpts from his notebooks, a book of character sketches, and an autobiography. He received numerous awards including the Vienna Prize in 1966, the Critics Prize (Germany) in 1967, the Great Austrian State Prize in 1967, the Buchner Prize in 1972, the Sachs Prize in 1975, the Hebbel Prize in 1980, and the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1981. He died on August 14, 1994.