With its third publication, Deep Vellum, an eclectic Dallas press, brings the work of French writer Anne Garrta to English readers for the first time. desirable to mewhen we made love, I couldn’t stop caressing them, my lips against the inner thighsit was something else, always something else, this indefinable something else where desire hides itself. *”he adjective Oulipian is retrofitted from the name OuLiPo which stands for o uvroir de littérature potentielle, or workshop for potential literature: a collective established in Paris in 1960 with the purpose of exploring and exploiting the generative literary potential of linguistic, mathematical, and scientific structures - which lots of the time, is a fancy way of saying the use of constraints as a writing aid. Beyond the elegant, geometric design of its cover, Sphinx (Deep Vellum 120 pages translated by Emma Ramadan) is an ambiguous, multifaceted beast. Emma Ramadan (Dallas: Deep Vellum Publishing,2015), 84. From Ramadan’s note: “Garréta believed that equality could not exist within a language that puts the two genders in opposition to each other, and so created a language and a world in which amorous relationships are not determined by a binary of distinction.” Ramadan’s translator’s note at the end of Sphinx addresses the task of having to rewrite parts of Garréta’s text to stay true to the constraint in English and the nature of writing with a gendered language. That story is realized in Sphinx, a fascinating book written under Oulipian* constraint, in which French author Anne Garréta walks a linguistic tightrope, building an experimental love story narrative around two central, genderless characters.Īs impressed as I was by Garréta’s ability to construct this narrative, I was equally impressed by Emma Ramadan’s translation of the text from French.

Imagine a story in which two lovers exist outside gendered norms, their identities not defined by sex or gender but rather given shape by the affection and desire they share.

Sphinx by Anne Garréta