The Play of the Eyes - by Elias Canetti (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

The Play of the Eyes is the third volume in Nobel Prize winning author Elias Canetti's trilogy of memoirs.

Here, Canetti describes his young adult life as he tries to make it as a writer in Vienna during the 1930s, and provides vivid accounts of the remarkable figures he meets along the way, usually in cafes, from Robert Musil, Thomas Mann, and Herman Broch, among others.

"Canetti uses a dramatist's gifts here to achieve emotional depth; his mother's death, sketched simply against the backdrop of a crumbling Europe, takes on a tragic dignity." - Publishers Weekly

About the Author

Elias Canetti was born in 1905 into a Sephardi Jewish family in Ruse, Bulgaria. He moved to Vienna in 1924, where he became involved in literary circles while studying for a degree in chemistry. He remained in Vienna until the Anschluss, when he emigrated to England and later to Switzerland, where he died in 1994. In 1981, Canetti was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature for "writings marked by a broad outlook, a wealth of ideas, and artistic power." His books include Crowds and Powers, Auto-da-Fe, and a trilogy of memoirs.