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Elias Canetti
Party in the Blitz: The English Years
Translated from the German by Michael Hofmann; with an Afterword by Jeremy Adler
ISBN 978-0-8112-1830-6; Online Ordering
Also available in cloth: 978-0-8112-1636-4; Online Ordering

Elias Canetti’s Party in the Blitz captures the “torture” and “needless humiliations” of his years in exile in wartime London. Well known throughout mainland Europe, Canetti was ignored by British intellectuals, and he scorned them in turn. By force of will alone, he accumulated followers, but not before being christened “the godmonster of Hampstead.” Party in the Blitz, like an X-ray, displays Canetti’s brief, scathing, brimstone sketches of the various people in his social circle: T.S. Eliot, Iris Murdoch, Ludwig Wittgenstein, Herbert Read, Bertrand Russell. Gorgeously translated by Michael Hofmann, Party in the Blitz lives up to Canetti's injunction that "when you write down your life, every page should contain something no one has ever heard about."

“This is the fourth and final volume of Elias Canetti’s memoirs. Its predecessors...were poised, richly detailed and slightly dull; Party in the Blitz, however, is chaotic... and horribly fascinating.”                      
—John Banville, The Nation

“Before there was the mysterious W.G. Sebald, there was the even more mysterious Elias Canetti.”   
—Clive James, The New York Times Book Review

“Canetti invites—indeed, compels—judgment. His exacting presence honors literature.” 
 —George Steiner, The New Yorker

“Canetti's brilliance as a writer shines out, particularly as it works to bring alive his intellectual passions.”
—Richard Eder, The Los Angeles Times