The Great Fire of London: A Story with Interpolations and Bifurcations
Roubaud, Jacques
A postmodern masterpiece by the French mathematician, poet, and Oulipo member, in which a writer, Roubaud, struggling in the wake of his wife's death, fails to write a novel, The Great Fire of London, and instead writes this, a novel/not-novel of digressions and asides, an oblique processing of grief and an extended meditation on the act of literary creation.
Elmwood Park, IL: Dalkey Archive Press, 1991. First American edition. Translated with an afterword by Dominic Di Bernardi. Octavo (6.25 x 9.25 in.); 330pp.; maroon cloth boards; gold spine lettering; in dust jacket. A touch of smudging to textblock edges, one crumpled bottom page corner. Else fine in a fine, unclipped jacket, mildly toned to flaps.
