Sphinx

Translated from the French by Emma Ramadan

This debut novel of French author Garréta, originally published in 1986 and appearing in English for the first time, is a landmark text in the feminist and LGBT literary canon. It’s a beautiful and complex love story between two characters, the narrator "I," and their lover, A***. Written without using any gender markers to refer to the main characters, Sphinx is a remarkable linguistic feat and paragon of experimental literature that has never been accomplished before or since in the strictly gendered French language.

Garréta is a lecturer at the University of Rennes II and research professor of literature and Romance studies at Duke. She is one of the few female members of Oulipo, the influential French experimental literary group whose mission is to create literature based on mathematical and linguistic restraints whose ranks include Georges Perec and Italo Calvino.