The Book of Questions: Volume I [The Book of Questions, The Book of Yukel, Return to the Book] (The Book of Questions , Vol 1)
“…language of rare density, a powerful and abrupt unit of tone, a vibrant soberness at the same time lyrical and abstract…unique in French prose.” —Roger Caillois, Les Nouveaux Cahiers“Neither novel nor poem, neither essay nor play, The Book of Questions is a combination of all these forms, a mosaic of fragments, aphorisms, dialogues, songs, and commentaries that endlessly move around the central question of the book: how to speak what cannot be spoken”—Paul Auster, New York Review of Books“For anyone who is interested in the last frontiers of thought and language he is an irreplaceable writer.”—Graham Martin, Times Literary SupplementThe Book of Questions is “first of all a response to the problem of writing after the Holocaust, of speaking the unspeakable.  To Theodor Adorno’s assertion that ‘one can no longer write poetry after Auschwitz,’ Mr. Jabès offers the poet’s only possible reply: ‘One must.’  Mr. Jabès recognizes, though, that one can no longer write as before.  His answer to this dilemma takes the form of a series of questions about book, word and sentence, speech and silence, God, justice and the law.  Instead of one narrative voice, The Book of Questions offers a theater of voices in a labyrinth of forms.  It is a work of great moral authority and urgency as well as beauty.” —Michael Palmer, New York Times Book Review