A Void

By Georges Perec

Book Overview

Winner of the Scott Moncrieff Prize for translation

A mind-bending and mysterious comedy from the author of Life A User's Manual.

A Void is a great linguistic adventure and a metaphysical whodunit, chock-full of plots and subplots, of trails in pursuit of trails, all displaying Georges Perec's virtuosity as a verbal magician. It is also an outrageous verbal stunt: a 300-page novel that never once employs the letter E.

The year is 1968, and as France is torn apart by social and political anarchy, the noted eccentric and insomniac Anton Vowl goes missing. Ransacking his Paris flat, his best friends scour his diary for clues to his whereabouts. At first glance these pages reveal nothing but Vowl's penchant for word games, especially for "lipograms," compositions in which the use of a particular letter is suppressed. But as the friends work out Vowl's verbal puzzles, and as they investigate various leads discovered among the entries, they too disappear, one by one by one, and under the most mysterious circumstances . . .

A book that only Georges Perec could have conceived, The New York Times called A Void, "a rollicking story, wildly amusing and easily accessible to all of us who don't mind slipping, sliding and being tripped."

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1567928226
• ISBN13: 9781567928228
• Release Date: November 2025
• Publisher: Verba Mundi
• Length: 304 Pages

Customer Reviews

Extraordinary translation

"A void" is Gilbert Adairs translation of Georges Perec's "La Disparation". The classic story tells the story of the disappearance of Anton Vowl and the sense of loss that comes because of this. And this book is without a single E. The letter, that is. The story is originally french, and was written without the letter E. This translation is remarkable in that Adair has managed to retell the story with the same limitations imposed by Perec.

A brilliant Who-Dun-It about all of us.

Won't try to keep up the non-e business here :) I have no idea why anyone finds this book tedious. It has a killer, loopy, murder mystery plot, but also manages to be a deeply felt meditation on absence and the way absences constitute our lives. Lots in common with Derrida, etc. The translation is a work of genius/insanity. I can't imagine a better job being done.

Justify my lipogram

Perec lost his mother in the Holocaust. A Void is precisely about the difficulty of speaking in the absence of the most necessary thing. Not merely an intellectual tour de force -- although certainly that -- but one of the most subtle things ever written on grief.

An odd and painful quandry, but truly amazing.

In words that twist within a mighty bind, a dark void winds away to worlds known but not any I can show. In this book a constant hum runs just out of mind's ability to grasp. Although many draw nigh, no pilgrim grabs it's ring of brass. Will you? A quandry; a missing part runs far within this book but is not shown. All talk, but say naught of this void. Oh longing, may this book fulfill. It has not any of a mainstay in our world. Try it on your own, The pain is worth it, so says I who has been through this hurt upon my own. It is truly amazing. NOTE: Not to be included in this review!! This book is a murder mystery written entirely without the letter "e" (as is this feeble review). The translator is a true genius as much as the author. His rendering of Poe's "Raven" is by itself a literary achievement of significant note, not to mention the rest of the book. Although the language is necessarily tortured and convoluted, the story flows along brilliantly. Just as a character begins to get close to uncovering the reality of the missing letter, he is done away with. For those with the stamina, a truly worthwhile read