Description: "Walter Abish has dovetailed his novel within a Procrustean scheme that has the terrifying and irrefutable logic of the alphabet. Alphabetical Africa is in the line of writers such as Raymond Roussel, Raymond Queneau, Georges Perec and Harry Mathews, who have used constrictive forms to penetrate the space on the other side of poetry." -- John Ashbery
Brief description: Walter Abish was born in Vienna in 1931. After moving to the United States in 1957, he taught at several universities in the US, served on the International PEN board, and won Guggenheim and MacArthur fellowships. He lives in New York City.