Edmond Jabes and the Archaeology of the Book : Text, Pre-Texts, Contexts

This book offers a fresh reflection on The Book of Questions by the French-Egyptian Jewish writer Edmond Jabès and its readings, and proposes to re-contextualize Jabès' enigmatic prose through the lens of the author’s manuscripts.

Addressed are the main prisms through which Jabès’ oeuvre has been read since its publication in 1963: Jewishness, the Shoah, intertextuality with Midrash and Kabbalah, hermeticism and interpretation.

It analyzes their shapes and their becoming in the work-in-progress, reveals the dynamics and the contexts of their evolution from the pre-texts to the text and beyond, and reflects on the relationship between creation, interpretation, and writing as a process.

It seeks to rethink our reading of The Book of Questions and the poetics and hermeneutics of enigmatic writing.