The award-winning writer Pascal Quignard (1948-) has published many texts and has collaborated with painters, musicians and filmmakers. Yet despite the popularity and critical recognition of his work, Quignard remains a discreet and fleeting presence in the current cultural landscape, sharing with other contemporary French writers the belief that literature is a form of self-effacement.

In this first critical study in English, LEa Vuong offers a comprehensive survey of Quignard's still growing OEuvre by examining his specific attempts to produce disappearance through -- and for --...