Lavish Absence

Edmond Jab s (1912-1991) is widely regarded as one of France's most important writers of the 20th century. Born in Cairo, he settled in France after being expelled from Egypt with other Jews during the 1956 Suez Crisis. Rosmarie Waldrop is Jab s's primary English translator. Over the course of her long association and friendship with Jab s, Waldrop developed a very nuanced understanding of his work that in turn influenced her development as both writer and translator. Lavish Absence is a book-length essay with a triple focus: it is a memoir of Jab s as Waldrop knew him, it is both an homage to and an explication of Jab s's work, and it is a meditation on the process of translation. The writing interweaves these topics, evoking Jab s's own interest in the themes of exile and nomadism.