This continues all the way down to the last chapter (the second "A"-chapter), which again consists only of words beginning with the letter A. He also takes words from African dictionaries, listing them -- but this too provides little additional insight. Used books have different signs of use and might not include supplemental materials such as CDs, Dvds, Access Codes, charts or any other extra material. Alphabetical Africa, Walter Abish’s delightful first novel, is an extraordinary linguistic tour de force, high comedy set in an imaginary dark continent that expands and contracts with ineluctable precision, as one by one the author adds the letters of the alphabet to his book, and then subtracts them.

All used books might have various degrees of writing, highliting and wear and tear and possibly be an ex-library with the usual stickers and stamps. In one of his first published short stories, for instance, his gem "Escapement" (1956), a man watching the tele with his wife experiences a bizarre hiccup in time's immutable ticktock, during which he discovers himself reliving the same fifteen minute span from 9:00-9:15 P. In Alphabetical Africa, for instance, the first chapter consists entirely of words beginning with the letter "A.Photo by Michael Wolf Franz aims to fly in Concentration City (it was a dream he had) but there's really no room to fly in a city that has no open air space -- not even for a single bird. After air attack author assumes Alva's asexuality affected African army's ack-ack accuracy, an arguable assumption, anyhow, army advances, annilihating antelopes, alligators and ants. The first O-chapter features a premature P in the penultimate paragraph: "As fast as I finish it, I promise her. The screening was the first ever simultaneous multi-lingual live stream of any film to all 54 African countries. As the book progresses and the number of permissible words grows, he finds: "I can speak more freely.

In the first chapter, every word must begin with A (“Ages ago, Alex, Allen, and Alva arrived at Antibes, and Alva allowing all, allowing anyone, against Alex’s admonition, against Allen’s angry assertion: another African amusement. It is fascinating to watch a wildly all-over-the-place author struggle with his own self-imposed (and rather stringent) restrictions. This structural device is a central element of the novel and is reflected in the title, "Alphabetical Africa," which hints at the book's linguistic playfulness. What kept me going was to see how well Abish dealt with the challenge, which I think he did admirably well. In addition to the current sovereign states in Africa, the list also includes Western Sahara, which is recognized by the African Union and some United Nations members.The author links images, broken images together with individual alphabet, the shrinking Africa is manipulated by the significant others, by us.

Given that those forbidden words can be rephrased using only words allowed in their chapters, I believe Abish has intentionally done this as a small joke and to keep us alert. Great use of (necessary, at times) alliteration, the language is poetic, it's surprisingly dense at ~160 pages. Released on the AfriDocs platform in conjunction with UNESCO, the film, which takes an intimate look into the African classroom and the consequences of not teaching children in their mother tongue, was made available in 27 indigenous African languages in addition to French, Portuguese and English. House of Leaves, for instance, has taken a ton of abuse for allegedly being a hollow shell of a novel whose shallowness is disguised by its carnival of textual formatting, though I disagree vehemently (as I digress) and believe the artifice of House of Leaves only enhances its uniquely imaginative artistry .After the 26th chapter, which uses all 26 letters like a normal book, each subsequent chapter loses one letter (the 27th chapter uses every letter except Z, the 28th chapter uses every letter except Z and Y, etc. It's a rather amazing feat to attempt and when I found the first word that didn't fit the pattern, I was crushed.