The first biography of Nobel laureate Elias Canetti. Sven Hanuschek was one of the first to access Canetti's estate and interview friends and companions. He tells the story of a man full of passion and energy, who, despite his talent for forming relationships, remained a loner. He narrates the life of a poet whose work stands in contrast to the major currents of 20th-century literature, and he recounts an exemplary fate of Jewish emigration that led from the small Bulgarian town of Ruse to Vienna, Berlin, London, and Zurich.