A Void

As his country is torn apart by social and political anarchy, A Void's protagonist, Anton Vowl, a chronic insomniac, is unaccountably found missing. Ransacking his Paris flat, a group of his faithful companions trawl through his diary for any indication, for any faint hint as to his location. All that it brings to light, though, is Vowl's liking for parody, wordplay and dazzling fictional constructs - and gradually, insidiously, a ghost from Vowl's past starts to cast its malignant shadow...

This is a story chock-full of plots and subplots, of trails in pursuit of trails, all of which allow its author an occasion to display his customary virtuosity as an avantgardist magician, acrobat and clown.

A Void's translator, too, is just as brilliant at such linguistic conjuring tricks, fully unflinchingly assuming a monstous constraint laid down by its author - to propound a gripping Gothic fiction with lots of twists and turns and without at any point invoking that most basic prop of traditional syntax: an e!