ELIAS CANETTI CENTRE, RUSE

Nobel Prize winner Elias Canetti (1905-1984) was born into one of the Ruse's important Jewish families. In 1911 they left Ruse for good and settled first in England and then in Austria. Young Elias would go on to become a writer, and in 1981 was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature. 

A book of memoirs, entitled Die Gerettete Zunge, or The Tongue Set Free, is possibly his best-known work. Even though he spent just the first six years of his life in Ruse, many Bulgarians claim that Elias Canetti is the only Bulgarian to have won a Nobel Prize. 

Elias Canetti's grandfather's shop, described in Die Gerettete Zunge, has been preserved and houses the Canetti House Cultural Institute.