Aminadab (Paperback)

Blanchot (b. 1907) is a mordant intellectual akin to the late Thomas Bernhard, Beckett, and Kafka, whose increasingly spare fictions (Awaiting Oblivion, English translation 1997, etc.) explore the difficulty and frustration of grasping and communicating meaning in a universe that seems complacently devoid of it. This novel (Blanchot's second, published in 1942) is a dark allegory whose protagonist Thomas impulsively enters a boardinghouse in a remote village, becomes caught up in the lives of its generic despairing inhabitants, and never reemerges. Aminadab (the name of the figure said to guard the building) is perhaps a variant on the myth of the underworld journey, a gloss on Kafka's The Castle (with a possible nod toward Mann's The Magic Mountain as well), and as intermittent hints suggest, a dramatization of the Jews' experience of ongoing diaspora. More accessible, in any case, than Blanchot's self-referential and discursive later work, this important publication offers the perfect introduction to an elusive, recondite, and unusually rewarding writer. (Kirkus Reviews)

The world of "Aminadab," Maurice Blanchot's second novel, is dark, bizarre, and fantastic. Reminiscent of Kafka's enclosed and allegorical spaces, "Aminadab" is both a reconstruction and a deconstruction of power, authority, and hierarchy. The novel opens when Thomas, upon seeing a woman gesture to him from a window of a large boarding house, enters the building and slowly becomes embroiled in its inscrutable workings.
Although Thomas is constantly reassured that he can leave the building, he seems to be separated forever from the world he has left behind. The story consists of Thomas's frustrated attempts to clarify his status as a resident in the building and his misguided interactions with the cast of sickly, depraved, or in some way deformed characters he meets, none of them ever quite what they seem to be. Aminadab, the man who according to legend guards the entrance to the building's underground spaces, is only one of the mysteries reified by the rumors circulating among the residents.

Written in a prose that is classical and at times lyrical, Blanchot's novel functions as an allegory referring, above all, to the wandering and striving movement of writing itself.

General

Imprint:	Bison Books
Country of origin:	United States
Series:	French Modernist Library
Release date:	June 2002
First published:	June 2002
Authors:	Maurice Blanchot
Translators:	Jeff Fort
Introduction by:	Jeff Fort
Dimensions:	216 x 140 x 13mm (L x W x T)
Format:	Paperback - Trade / Trade
Pages:	200
ISBN-13:	978-0-8032-6176-1
Categories:	Books > Fiction > General & literary fiction > Modern fiction
LSN:	0-8032-6176-4
Barcode:	9780803261761

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