Poetry
The Book of Questions
Le Livre des questions
Edmond Jabès · 1963
Synopsis
The book does not tell a continuous story. Sarah and Yukel loved each other, and the deportations separated them; according to Paul Auster, Sarah returns from the camps with her mind broken, while Yukel, a writer, writes. Around them speak imaginary rabbis, who comment in maxims on this story that cannot be told whole and who question writing itself. The text advances by fragments, aphorisms and dialogues, separated by blanks and broken by parentheses.
Context
The book appeared from Gallimard in 1963 and opened a cycle of seven volumes gathered under the same title, completed in 1973. It is the first that Jabès wrote in exile, in Paris, and the Shoah is, according to Acta fabula, its starting point. The rabbis in it are of his invention and speak in the manner of Talmudic commentary. Rosmarie Waldrop gave the English translation in 1976, which Paul Auster praised the following year in the New York Review of Books.
Who it is for
About two hundred pages in French, with no continuous narrative, to be read in fragments and in any order.
Prizes and reception
The book that opened its author's work of exile and made him known to English-language readers.
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