The Book Against Death is the work of a lifetime: a collection of Elias Canetti's powerful, disarming, and often bleakly comic observations, diatribes, musings, and commentaries on and against death. Evoking despair, melancholy, and fury, Canetti examines the inevitable demise of all beings--from the ant, the fish, and the worm to an executioner, a court painter, and a Greek god--while fiercely protesting the mass deaths incurred during war and...