Edmond Jabes and the Hazard of Exile

For a man who no longer has a homeland, writing becomes a place to live (Theodor Adorno). The Jewish writer Edmond Jabes, born in Cairo in 1912, wrote explicitly from the perspective of exile once he arrived in France after the Suez crisis. However, Jaron argues, exile was a predominant theme even before Jabes left Egypt. He brings to light the author's associations with other francophone writers in Egypt, especially those affiliated with the Surrealists, but shows that metropolitan France exerted a greater pull. Drawing on unpublished archival and rare printed sources, Jaron examines how Jabes opposed anti-Semitism during the 1930s, and later placed the Shoah at the heart of his acclaimed "Livres des Questions" (1963-73).