La Disparition (literally, "The Disappearance") is a 300 page French lipogrammatic novel, written in 1969 by Georges Perec, entirely without the letter e, following Oulipo constraints. A lipogram (from Greek lipagrammatos, missing letter) is a kind of writing with constraints or word game consisting of writing paragraphs or longer works in which a particular letter or group of letters is missing, usually a common vowel, the most common in English being e (McArthur, 1992). ... DeFoes Robinson Crusoe, Newspaper edition published in 1719 A novel (from French nouvelle, new) is an extended fictional narrative in prose. ... 1969 (MCMLXIX) was a common year starting on Wednesday For other uses, see Number 1969. ... Image of artist Georges Perec (March 7, 1936 - March 3, 1982) was a 20th century French novelist, filmmaker and essayist, a member of the Oulipo group and considered by many to be one of the most important post-WWII authors. ... The letter E is the fifth letter in the Latin alphabet. ... Oulipo stands for Ouvroir de littérature potentielle, which translates roughly as workshop of potential literature. It is a loose gathering of French-speaking writers and mathematicians, and seeks to create works using constrained writing techniques. ...

It was translated into English by Gilbert Adair, with the title A Void, for which he won the Scott Moncrieff Prize in 1995. There are two other English translations, one by John Lee who titled it Vanish'd!, and the other by Ian Monk (A Vanishing). Translation is an activity comprising the interpretation of the meaning of a text in one language — the source text — and the production, in another language, of a new, equivalent text — the target text, or translation. ... The English language is a West Germanic language that originates in England. ... Gilbert Adair (born December 29, 1944) is an author, film critic, and journalist who won the Scott Moncrieff Translation Prize for his book A Void which is a translation of the French book La Disparition by Georges Perec. ... The Scott Moncrieff Prize, named for translator Charles Scott Moncrieff, is an annual £2,000 literary prize for French to English translation, awarded to one or more translators every year for a full-length work deemed by The Translators Association to have literary merit. ... 1995 (MCMXCV) was a common year starting on Sunday of the Gregorian calendar. ... There have been several people named John Lee. ... Ian Monk (1960 -) is a British writer and translator. ...

All versions omit the letter e, a remarkable feat considering that it is the most commonly used letter of the alphabet in both English and French. Normally essential words such as je (I) and le (the) are absent in the original, along with similarly common words like 'me' or 'the' in the translations. An alphabet is a complete standardized set of letters — basic written symbols — each of which roughly represents a phoneme of a spoken language, either as it exists now or as it may have been in the past. ...

The book has also been translated in German (Anton Voyls' Fortgang, 1986), and in Spanish (El secuestro, 1997). The Spanish version contains no a, which is the most commonly used letter in that language. 1986 (MCMLXXXVI) is a common year starting on Wednesday of the Gregorian calendar. ... 1997 (MCMXCVII) is a common year starting on Wednesday of the Gregorian calendar. ... Look up A and a in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. ...

The book was also translated into Turkish by Cemal Yardımcı with the title Kayboluş without using the letter e. Turkish translation consists of 57.000 words and 370.430 letters. [1]

Plot

A Void's plot follows a group of individuals hunting a missing companion, Anton Vowl. It is in part a parody of noir and horror fiction, with a grim conclusion. It also contains many stylistic tricks and gags, inspiring criticism of it as a shallow and uninvolving stunt. // Plot in literature, theater, movies According to Aristotles Poetics, a plot in literature is the arrangement of incidents that (ideally) each follow plausibly from the other. ... In contemporary usage, parody is a form of satire that imitates another work of art in order to ridicule it. ... Noir could refer to: Noir is the French language word for black. Film noir is a genre of movie. ... Horror fiction is, broadly, fiction in any medium intended to scare, unsettle or horrify the reader. ... The Three Graces, here in a painting by Sandro Botticelli, were the goddesses of charm, beauty, nature, human creativity and fertility in Greek mythology. ...

Themes

However, other critics believe the novel offers more. Warren Motte, for instance, provides one interpretation when he writes in an article on Georges Perec in the literary magazine Context, Literary criticism is the study, discussion, evaluation, and interpretation of literature. ... Interpretation, or interpreting, is an activity that consists of establishing, either simultaneously or consecutively, oral or gestural communications between two or more speakers who are not speaking (or signing) the same language. ...

The absence of a sign is always the sign of an absence, and the absence of the E in A Void announces a broader, cannily coded discourse on loss, catastrophe, and mourning. Perec cannot say the words père, mère, parents, famille in his novel, nor can he write the name Georges Perec. In short, each "void" in the novel is abundantly furnished with meaning, and each points toward the existential void that Perec grappled with throughout his youth and early adulthood. A strange and compelling parable of survival becomes apparent in the novel, too, if one is willing to reflect on the struggles of a Holocaust orphan trying to make sense out of absence, and those of a young writer who has chosen to do without the letter that is the beginning and end of écriture.

Note: The French words above respectively mean father, mother, parents, family, writing.

Motte is referring to the fact Perec was brought up by his aunt and uncle, as both his parents perished in World War II. Combatants Allied Powers Axis Powers Commanders {{{commander1}}} {{{commander2}}} Strength {{{strength1}}} {{{strength2}}} Casualties 17 million military deaths 7 million military deaths World War II, also known as the Second World War (sometimes WW2 or WWII), was a mid-20th century conflict that engulfed much of the globe and is accepted as...

External links

• Brief excerpt from the Adair translation
• Review by Danny Yee