Paul Celan: A Life

A luminous, groundbreaking biography of one of the most important literary figures of the twentieth century, best known for the poem “Deathfugue.”

Paul Celan (1920–1970) was recognized as the greatest poet of the German language shortly before his tragic death just shy of his fiftieth birthday, when he drowned himself in the Seine. He described his “Todesfuge” (“Deathfugue”) as a “tombstone” for his mother, who perished in the Holocaust. Celan’s work is often viewed as a rejoinder to Theodor...