A void.

The year is 1968, and as France is torn apart by social and political anarchy, the noted eccentric and insomniac Anton Vowl goes missing. Ransacking his Paris flat, his best friends scour his diary for clues to his whereabouts. At first glance these pages reveal nothing but Vowl's penchant for word games, especially for "lipograms," compositions in which the use of a particular letter is suppressed. But as the friends work out Vowl's verbal puzzles, and as they investigate various leads discovered among the entries, they too disappear, one by one by one, and under the most mysterious circumstances . . . A Void is a metaphysical whodunit, a story chock-full of plots and subplots, of trails in pursuit of trails, all of which afford Perec occasion to display his virtuosity as a verbal magician, acrobat, and sad-eyed clown. It is also an outrageous verbal stunt: a 300-page novel that never once employs the letter E. Adair's translation, too, is astounding; Time called it "a daunting triumph of will pushing its way through imposing roadblocks to a magical country, an absurdist nirvana of humor, pathos, and loss." As His Country Is Torn Apart By Social And Political Anarchy, A Void's Protagonist, Anton Vowl, A Chronic Insomniac, Is Unaccountably Found Missing. Ransacking His Paris Flat, A Group Of His Faithful Companions Trawl Through His Diary For Any Indication, For Any Faint Hint, As To His Location. All That It Brings To Light, Though, Is Vowl's Liking (uncannily Similar To His Author's) For Parody, Wordplay And Dazzling Fictional Constructs, Constructs Which Continually Risk Spiralling Out Of Control. And, Gradually, Insidiously, A Ghost From Vowl's Past Starts To Cast Its Malignant Shadow ...--jacket. George Perec ; Translated From The French By Gilbert Adair. As much a masterpiece of translation as a novel, 'A Void' contains not one single letter e anywhere in the main body of the text. This clever and unusual novel is full of plots and sub-plots, of trails in pursuit of trails and linguistic conjuring tricks