From the Book to the Book: An Edmond Jabs Reader, Paperback

"To take the wrong door means indeed to go against the order that presided over the plan of the house, over the layout of the rooms, over the beauty and rationality of the whole. But what discoveries are made possible for the visitor The new path permits him to see what no one other than himself could have perceived from that angle. All the more so because I am not sure that one can enter a written work without having forced one's own way in first." -; from In Place of a Foreword

EDMOND JAB S died in Paris in 1991 at the age of 78. He settled in France after being expelled from his native Egypt with other Jews during the 1956 Suez Crisis. In 1987 he received France's National Grand Prize for Poetry. His other works available in English include The Book of Dialogue (1987), The Book of Resemblances in three volumes, and The Book of Questions issued in two volumes in 1991. ROSMARIE WALDROP's most recent books are a volume of poetry, Peculiar Motions (1990), and a novel, A Form / of Taking / It All (1990). Her translations of Jab s won a Columbia University Translation Center Award. RICHARD STAMELMAN is Professor of Romance Languages and Literature and William R. Jenan, Jr., Professor of Humanities at Wesleyan University.