A luminous, groundbreaking biography of one of the most important literary figures of the twentieth century, best known for the poem “Death Fugue.”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” (“Death Fugue”) as a “tombstone” for his mother, who perished in the Holocaust. Celan’s work is often view...