Paul Celan, Europe's most compelling postwar poet, was a German-speaking, East European Jew. His writing exposes and illumines the wounds that Nazi destructiveness left on language. John Felstiner's sensitive and accessible book is the first critical biography of Celan in any language. It offers new translations of well-known and little-known poems, with a chapter on Celan's famous "Deathfugue," plus his speeches, prose fiction, and letters.

The book also presents hitherto unpublished photos of the poet and his circle.