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A Void (Paperback)

by Georges Perec (Author), Gilbert Adair (Translator)
4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)

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Product details

  • Paperback: 288 pages
  • Publisher: The Harvill Press; New edition edition (Mar 1996)
  • Language English
  • ISBN-10: 1860460984
  • ISBN-13: 978-1860460982
  • Product Dimensions: 21.3 x 13.5 x 2 cm
  • Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
  • Amazon.co.uk Sales Rank: 635,514 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

    Popular in this category:

    #19 in  Books > Fiction > Cult Authors > Perec, Georges

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Product Description

Product Description

Insomniac Anton Vowl is missing from his Paris rooms, and his companions look for information in his diary, in a work using no "e".


From the Back Cover

"Here is a true tour de force: a full-length novel containing not a single E ... The translator's dazzling recreation conveys the author's near magical cleverness while preserving an underlying seriousness that makes this book much more than a curiosity" New Yorker

As his country is torn apart by social and political anarchy, A Void's protagonist Anton Vowl, a chronic insomniac, is unaccountably found missing. Ransacking his Paris flat, a group of his faithful companions trawl through his diary for any indication, for any faint hint, as to his locatin. All that it brings to light, though, is Vowl's liking for parody, wordplay and dazzling fictional constructs - and gradually, insidiously, a ghost from Vowl's past starts to cast its malignant shadow ...

This is a story chock-full of plots and subplots, of trails in pursuit of trails, all of which allow its author an occasion to display his customary virtuosity as an avantgardist magician, acrobat and clown.

A Void's translator, too, is just as brilliant at such linguistic conjuring tricks, fully, unflinchingly assuming a monstrous constraint laid down by its author - to propound a gripping Gothic fiction with lots of twists and turns and without at any point invoking that most basic prop of tradtional syntax: an e!

"Adair's translation is an astounding Anglicanisation of Francophonic mania, a daunting triumph of will pushing its way through imposing roadblocks to a magical country, an absurdist nirvana, of humour, pathos and loss." Paul Gray, Time

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Customer Reviews

3 Reviews
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Average Customer Review
4.3 out of 5 stars (3 customer reviews)
 
 
 
 
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

 
24 of 25 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars Surprisingly good., 23 Oct 2001
By A Customer
This is an ambitious book by anybody's standards. A brilliant translation by Adair - not that I know any Francais - but obviously a major task to accomplish without using that particular symbol and still maintain a lyrical flow throughout. It has a fantastical plot, as if from a Salvador Dali painting, but this story's main conundrum (viz. what is missing) is told to us prior to starting - which spoils it slightly. My only additional criticism is that it is difficult to follow at points and occasionally hard going.

Still, indubitably worth four stars.

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5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars The plot twists are as unusual as the writing style, 23 Aug 2001
As a group of aquaintances try to discover the truth behind the dissapearance of their mutual friend they uncover a plot worthy of any detective novel. The style of writing takes on an edge of poetry at times, this can be difficult to follow but still manages to hold the readers interest and certainly adds a dark quality to the affair. Having not read any of Perec's other work I found it hard to tell if the author was held back by his choice not to use the letter "e", it would be interesting to give the book to somebody without telling them and see if they noticed the absence of the enlish languages most common letter. I won't pretend to understand exactly what Perec was trying to say in this novel but I found some interesting social and sociological points raised in the book and it is obviouse that this novel has a depth beyond that of the plot. A challenging read well worth taking the time to ponder over.
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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars This you should study, ask not why, 7 Nov 2008
By Critch "Noumenon" (Madrid, Spain) - See all my reviews
This significant book, who's linguistically cunning author calls for no introduction, strains against a troublingly unjust handicap... in fact, two. It informs of a tall story, that of Anton Vowl, a similar champion of virtuoso wordplay who is lost to a churning, sorrowful world without warning, thus provoking a fatal inquiry amongst bosom companions and distant contacts both, all of whom follow suit in shrugging off this mortal coil by turns - but within this account of bodily vanishings lurks a vast conundrum of non-inclusion, a puzzling confrontation orbiting around a pivotal lack so mammoth, so voluminous in its span as to thwart plausibility, whilst still so small as to prohibit our noticing it at all.

Still, this sacrificial act, this abdication, this hamstringing is an affliction which it inflicts by will, a pain which it truly wants, and no word said (nor any action) can or should bring a mitigatory balm to this masochistic, if not outright sadistic, mutilation. In a word - this book is an avowal (thank you) that no trick of lingual manipulation is out of bounds for our national patois, nor that of its Gallic originator. In this it triumphs grandly, though that victory occurs at a total cost of simplicity of communication, vigorously slamming shut its highly-wrought doors upon any unlucky digits of cursory curiosity too dozy to pull away. But what bounty awaits stoical inquiry - in particular a work of brilliant rhyming skill, amongst a (now painfully shorn) handful of gracious nods to prior wordsmiths of no small acclaim.

On an opposing, still thumb-sporting hand, it is to an additional cross (born out of admiration, I will admit, but anyway) that I must turn my angry focus upon. On first sight of its striking bindings this book displays its own solitary flaw, imparting a critical hint as to what is at hand; and in all writings on this topic it is as if divulging A Void's cryptic crux is a vital goal, as if baring its soul without just sanction is to show apt approbation or, put simply, to do it honour. Sadly, to my mind this only subtracts from any summing of its multifariously loquacious parts, and not as its author originally did.

It is, probably, possibly, a foolish wish, an Utopian illusion that such a book as this could both flourish and still maintain its ambiguous shroud; for who could withstand this typographic storm, who would voluntarily swallow such an occasionally sour tasting pill without knowing why, what man or woman is willing to climb so high an obstruction as this, with no conscious motivation for attaining its final summit? How fitting, though, how chivalrous to abstain: to stand back from broadcasting all, from shouting on rooftops, from crowing with abandon; from cutting to, and out, its pounding corazón and draining off its blood; to simply say, "this you should study, ask not why".

In fact, I cannot bring my own musings to a conclusion in such a way as to risk committing a similarly criminal act on my part. What can I say to sum up my thoughts? Ah, I know - though in choosing my closing words I may unwittingly clarify, not mask. But I shall stop writing now with this, in summary of A Void:

Georges Perec's exemplary achievement - deliberate elementary absence, ever expressed, never revealed - comprehensively exceeds expectations. However, foreknowledge undermines these endeavours; excessively free reviewers threaten depreciating every newcomer's revelatory experience. Perec's perfectly perforated, entirely incomplete, pervasively evasive piece deserves better; mere readers likewise.
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