“Alphabetical Africa: A Revolutionary Tale of Modernism, Humor and Experimentation by Walter Abisch”

2023-05-27 21:51:00

UAlphabetical Africa, published in 1974 by Walter Abisch, is a novel form of modernism, experimental interest, history, and cutting edge humor. According to Harold Bloom, Alphabetical Africa is one of the most enduring works of twentieth-century writing. Many of the world’s most adventurous readers seek out this book because of the whimsy of its creation and fascinating structure. “Exquisite writing, this book gives the feeling of taking in a breath and letting it out with regularity and relief,” says Laurence Alloa. This is the first novel of American writer Walter Abish. The story takes place in the fantasy land of the novelist’s imagination. The writer has used a high level of humor as a unit to tell the story. Abish narrates an unpredictable journey through the stories of people in unreal lands. The structural innovation adopted for it is very different. As we turn the pages, we see the story told in fifty-two chapters.
In the first chapter, all words begin with the first letter of the English language, A. In the second chapter only words beginning with B and A are written. Chapter 3 And those written only with words beginning with three letters A, B and C. Thus, in the twenty-sixth chapter, Abish presented to the world the writing style of starting each word with the letters A to Z, which made the book remarkable. The twenty-eighth chapter is turning into a descending form. In which all letters are used as initial letters of words. Twenty-nine do not use z as an initial letter. In the thirtieth chapter z and y have no initial position. It goes like this. By chapter fifty-two, all words begin with A alone. Abish has arranged the ascending and descending letters in the novel like the tones in music.
The writer has adopted a difficult strategy of becoming famous in the literary world by experimenting in novel writing. That experiment has been successfully used by some poets in the English language before, like Raymond Russell, in their poems. Readers looking for variety often welcome such experiments even before they know their ultimate outcome. Alphabetic Africa has also been criticized in some places as having disrupted the wildly intended innovation in structure. But the decision to make such a novel is very big. The work done is difficult. In the words of the author, great pains were required at various stages of the writing to maintain the humor of the novel.
Walter Abish has written many short stories. Born in US. In those stories, the experiences of an insecure childhood, fleeing the Nazis, have come into play. He then lived in Italy, Shanghai and Israel. Abish, who worked in the army in his youth, turned his free time to reading deliberately. The desire to become a writer was burning inside from a young age. Back to US in 1957. He became a teacher in universities. In 1974, the first novel Alphabetic Africa came out. The novel was an unexpected success. An absolutely amazing read
This novel slowly grew. In 1981, his second work, How German Is It? Abish won the Faulkner Award for his novel. Still no work parallel to Alphabetic Africa is known to have been written in English. So that novelty remains.

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