The Book of Questions: Volume II [Yaël; Elya; Aely; El, or the Last Book] (Revised)

Jabès has created a new and mysterious kind of literary work - as dazzling as it is difficult to define.–Paul Auster, New York Review of Books

Jabès has created a new and mysterious kind of literary work - as dazzling as it is difficult to define.–Paul Auster, New York Review of Books

The 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