The Tongue Set Free: Remembrance of a European Childhood

Description

'The Tongue Set Free is so beautifully written. It begins with an extraordinary image, Canetti's earliest memory. He comes out of a room. A man makes him stick out his tongue; if he talks he will cut it off. Years later Canetti realises that this was his nursemaid's lover, frightening him into silence about their rendezvous. The idea of speaking as the entry into forbidden grown-up life dominates this book. When he is seven his father dies. He is propelled from childhood into adulthood, from his father to his mother, through language. In an extraordinary, cruel episode his mother forces him to learn perfect adult German in three months, to replace her husband as quickly as possible. His tongue is set free: he has won his mother, against brothers and against all lovers.

Elias Canetti (1905-1994), winner of the 1981 Nobel Prize for Literature, was one of the major intellectual figures and polymaths of the twentieth century. A master of many genres, he is known especially for his novel, Auto Da Fe, and his great work of social theory, Crowds and Power. But Canetti's genius is perhaps nowhere more evident that in the three volumes of his autobiography, now reissued by Granta Books - The Tongue Set Free, The Torch in My Ear and The Play of the Eyes.

This is a book of real passion and power ... full of cities and sights and odd people - wolves, lovers, food, folktales, war and quarrels -- Paul Theroux * Spectator * A tremendous story of determination and triumph ... Canetti led his life without compromise, fear, or guilt, and if one now encounters his early years for the first time the experience is nearly like discovering, without warning, a complex and satisfying work of art * New Yorker * A welcome reissue * Sunday Herald * A Nobel Prize-winning piece of literature and its easy to see why ... Captivating * Big Issue in the North *