Alphabetical Africa
Alphabetical Africa by Walter Abish is a unique exploration of language and narrative structure, published by New Directions Publishing in 1974. This first paperback edition spans 152 pages and is presented in English. The novel unfolds in an imaginative setting, described as an extraordinary linguistic tour de force that combines high comedy with a playful manipulation of the alphabet, as the author systematically adds and subtracts letters throughout the text.
Readers will encounter a vibrant and whimsical landscape where the African terrain shifts dramatically, influenced by a variety of eccentric characters and events. The story features an army of driver ants, an invasion by Zanzibar, and the colorful antics of the transvestite Queen Quat of Tanzania, all while a pair of jewel thieves pursue their target. This inventive narrative intertwines elements of fiction, literary history, and geography, offering a distinctive reading experience that challenges conventional storytelling.
Official synopsis Publisher
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. While the “geoglyphic” African landscape forms and crumbles, it is, among other things, attacked by an army of driver ants, invaded by Zanzibar, painted orange by the transvestite Queen Quat of Tanzania, and becomes a hunting ground for a pair of murderous jewel thieves tracking down their nymphomaniac moll.
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