Nathan Elberg has lived most of his life in Montreal, Canada. Following his graduation from McGill University, Honours degree in Anthropology, he conducted research on behalf of the Indians of Quebec Association, and several Departments of the Government of Canada. He obtained a Master’s Degree in Anthropology from the New School for Social Research, where he studied with Dr. Edmund Carpenter, one of the prime movers of the Toronto School of Communication Theory (along with Harold Innis and Marshal McLuhan). Elberg’s Supervisor was Prof. Michael Harner, who specialized in shamanic studies and cannibalism. Following graduation, Elberg worked as Research Director for the Labrador Inuit Association.
Elberg spent considerable time living with Cree Indians and Inuit. He passed a winter hunting, trapping and fishing deep in the boreal forest. He’s eaten everything from porcupine to walrus to beluga whale, which perhaps influenced him to eventually adopt a kosher diet.
As he raised a family he switched from anthropology to real estate, working as a commercial broker. He has three children, four grandchildren, and has been with his wife since nineteen seventy-four.
Elberg published his first short stories in Strobe Magazine while an undergraduate. His writing took a hiatus till 2002, following which several religious essays were published. His resumed writing fiction in 2010, when he began conceived the novel which eventually became Quantum Cannibals. publishing short stories both online and in print. Most are under his own name; some are under a nom-de-plum.
Elberg is Chairman of the International Board of Directors of a think tank, the Canadian Institute for Jewish Research, and has co-edited its publication on Aboriginal Zionism. He retired as a broker in 2018, and since then has devoted his energy to writing, research, and of course, social media.
Elberg’s novel Quantum Cannibals was first published in November 2018. A second edition came out in August 2020. It is genre-bending, character-driven literary speculative fiction that- like Mitchell’s Cloud Atlas or Huxley’s Eyeless in Gaza before it- weaves multiple intersecting narratives that span time, from Bronze Age Mesopotamia to a Post-Modern city-state. It’s the epic story of three incarnations of two people- alternately son and mother, husband and wife, father and daughter, savage and scholar, who simply want to return to the home they were brutally evicted from. Quantum Cannibals brings together authentic cultures and history from Melanesia, Siberia, Europe, the Americas, and more.
Elberg co-edited Zionism, An Indigenous Struggle, which was published jointly by the Canadian Institute for Jewish Research and RVP Press. It’s an anthology of articles examining the relationship between Native American and Jewish issues, focusing on Palestinian attempts to hijack the Native American struggle for rights and recognition into the framework of Palestinian suffering. Contributors include scholars, attorneys, Native Americans, Jews, and Jewish Native Americans.