Thomas the Obscure

Before Sartre, before Beckett, before Robbe-Grillet, Maurice Blanchot created the 'new novel, ' the ultimate post-modern fiction. Written between 1932 and 1940, Blanchot's first novel, here brilliantly translated by Robert Lamberton, contains all the remarkable aspects of his famous and perplexing invention, 'the ontological narrative'--a tale whose subject is the nature of bei...

Before Sartre, before Beckett, before Robbe-Grillet, Maurice Blanchot created the 'new novel, ' the ultimate post-modern fiction. Written between 1932 and 1940, Blanchot's first novel, here brilliantly translated by Robert Lamberton, contains all the remarkable aspects of his famous and perplexing invention, 'the ontological narrative'--a tale whose subject is the nature of being itself. This paradoxical work discovers being in the absence of being, mystery in the absence of mystery, both to be searched for limitlessly. As Blanchot launches this endless search in his own masterful way, he transforms the possibilities of the novel. First issued in English in 1973 in a limited edition, this re-issue includes an illuminating essay on translation by Lamberton.

莫里斯·布朗肖（Maurice Blanchot），法国著名作家、思想家，1907年生于索恩-卢瓦尔，2003年逝世于巴黎。布朗肖一生行事低调，中年后不接受采访与摄影，但他的作品和思想影响了整个法国当代思想界，对法国许多大知识分子和大作家如乔治·巴塔耶、列维纳斯、萨特、福柯、罗兰·巴特、德里达等都影响深远。