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Bident has scored a double triumph with his biography: It situates a major writer squarely in his time, and it extends and enriches our understanding of that time by revealing a diverse tradition of original writing that for too long has remained in the shadows. Bident's prose is clear and sinewy, with a lightness of touch when it comes to close analysis, yet with a capacity to burgeon briefly into telling metaphors and pithy turns of phrase. As one of his correspondents wrote to Blanchot when the book appeared in French, 'It has the immense merit of finally obliging the readers of your work to face up to their responsibilities. From now on there can be no excuse for invoking some veil of secrecy. In that sense, the post-Bident era should be very different from the pre-Bident one.--Michael Holland, Oxford Unviersity An essential addition to the library of anyone seriously interested in Maurice Blanchot and the evolutions of literary and philosophical thinking in twentieth-century France.--Lydia Davis An event of the first magnitude, illuminating the life and writing of perhaps the most compelling, unsettling, and wondrously enigmatic author of the last century.--Tom Conley, Harvard University

Maurice Blanchot by Christophe Bident is an essential addition to the library of anyone seriously interested in Maurice Blanchot and the evolutions of literary and philosophical thinking in twentieth-century France.--Lydia Davis

Bident has scored a double triumph with his biography: It situates a major writer squarely in his time, and it extends and enriches our understanding of that time by revealing a diverse tradition of original writing that for too long has remained in the shadows. Bident's prose is clear and sinewy, with a lightness of touch when it comes to close analysis, yet with a capacity to burgeon briefly into telling metaphors and pithy turns of phrase. As one of his correspondents wrote to Blanchot when the book appeared in French, 'It has the immense merit of finally obliging the readers of your work to face up to their responsibilities. From now on there can be no excuse for invoking some veil of secrecy. In that sense, the post-Bident era should be very different from the pre-Bident one.' --Michael Holland, Oxford Unviersity An essential addition to the library of anyone seriously interested in Maurice Blanchot and the evolutions of literary and philosophical thinking in twentieth-century France. --Lydia Davis Finally available in English, John McKeane's crisp and elegant translation of Christophe Bident's Maurice Blanchot is an event of the first magnitude. Illuminating the life and writing of perhaps the most compelling, unsettling, and wondrously enigmatic author of the last century, Bident discerns in Blanchot what he calls narrative writing. Either neglected or shrouded in secrecy and silence, the oeuvre is taken up and studied exactingly in view of the difficult and shifting contexts in which it took shape. In its method and execution Bident's critical biography stands as a major point of reference in twentieth-century studies. --Tom Conley, Harvard University

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Christophe Bident (Author) Christophe Bident is Professor of Theater Studies at the University of Picardie Jules Verne. He is the author of works on Maurice Blanchot, Roland Barthes and Bernard-Marie Koltès. John McKeane (Translator) John McKeane is Lecturer in Modern French Literature at the University of Reading. He is the translator of Jean-Luc Nancy's Adoration: the Deconstruction of Christianity II.

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