Elias Canetti was a Bulgarian-born Swiss and British Jewish modernist novelist, playwright, memoirist, and non-fiction writer. He was born in Ruse, Bulgaria to a Sephardic Jewish family. Canetti lived in various countries including England, Austria, Germany, and Switzerland. He was awarded the 1981 Nobel Prize in Literature "for writings marked by a broad outlook, a wealth of ideas and artistic power."

He is particularly noted for his non-fiction book Crowds and Power, among other works such as Auto-da-Fé, Party in the Blitz, and The Voices of Marrakesh: A Record of a Visit. Canetti studied in Vienna and moved to England before World War II with his wife Veza, where he stayed for a long period. In the late 1960s, he lived in London and Zurich, eventually moving permanently to Zurich in the late 1980s. He died in Zurich in 1994.