Janet's review
A Void (Verba Mundi) by Georges Perec
This is a hilarious book, written originally in French without the use of the letter "e," and then translated brilliantly by Gilbert Adair using the same restriction. I'll be teaching parts of it this fall in the senior writing seminar (topic: Restrictions) and hadn't read it in years. Basically, it is a strict Oulipo project--"Oulipo" being a short form of the French words for "Workshop for potential literature." The rule must be adhered to in the creation of the work, and must also be referred to in the content of the work; thus the rule--omitting the letter e--leads to the plot: the mysterious disappearance of Anton Vowl. The jacket flap of my copy notes that "After writing La Disparition (A Void), [Perec:] took all his unused e's and devoted them to a short text, Les Revenentes, in which e is the only vowel employed."
