A Void

A Void, translated from the original French La Disparition (lit. 'The Disappearance'), is a 300-page French lipogrammatic novel, put out in 1969 by Georges Perec, written wholly without using the letter e, following Oulipo constraints.

Plot summary

A Void's plot follows a group looking for a missing companion, Anton Vowl. It is in part a parody of noir and horror fiction, with many stylistic tricks, gags, plot twists, and a grim conclusion. On many occasions it implicitly talks about its own lipogrammatic limitation, highlighting its unusual syntax. A Void's protagonists finally work out which symbol is missing, but find it a hazardous topic to discuss, as any who try to bypass this story's constraint risk fatal injury. Philip Howard, writing a lipogrammatic appraisal of A Void in his column Lost Words, said: "This is a story chock-full of plots and sub-plots, of loops within loops, of trails in pursuit of trails, all of which allow its author an opportunity to display his customary virtuosity as an avant-gardist magician, acrobat and clown."

Major themes

Georges Perec's direct kin passed away in World War II: his father as a GI, his mother in the Holocaust. Perec was brought up by his aunt and uncle. Warren Motte finds the lack of any e in the book as a stand-in for Perec's own notion of loss and spiritual limbo:

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 ["father"], mère ["mother"], parents ["parents"], famille ["family"] in his novel, nor can he write the name Georges Perec. In short, each "void" in the novel is abundantly furnished with connotation, and each points toward the existential void that Perec fought with throughout his youth and early adulthood.