Elias Canetti

Please note that the content of this book primarily consists of articles available from Wikipedia or other free sources online. Elias Canetti (25 July 1905-14 August 1994) was a Bulgarian-born modernist novelist, playwright, memoirist, and non-fiction writer. He wrote in German. He won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1981, "for writings marked by a broad outlook, a wealth of ideas and artistic power". Born to Jacques Canetti and Mathilde née Arditti in Ruse, a city on the Danube in Bulgaria, Elias Canetti was the eldest of three sons in a wealthy Jewish merchant family. His ancestors were Sephardi Jews who had been expelled from Spain in 1492. His paternal ancestors had settled in Ruse from Ottoman Adrianople. The original family name was Cañete, named after a village in Spain. In Ruse, Elias' father and grandfather were successful merchants who operated out of a commercial building, which they had built in 1898. Canetti's mother descended from one of the oldest Sephardi families in Bulgaria, Arditti, who were among the founders of the Ruse Jewish colony in the late 18th century. The Ardittis can be traced back to the 14th century, when they were court physicians and astronomers to the Aragonese royal court of Alfonso IV and Pedro IV.