Marcel Bénabou is a professor of ancient history at the University of Paris and the permanent provisional secretary of Oulipo. Steven Rendall is the author of Distinguo: Reading Montaigne Differently. Warren Motte, a professor of French at the University of Colorado, is the author of several books including Playtexts: Ludics in Contemporary Literature (Nebraska 1995).

"A dry wit and surprising pathos infuse this 'family epic,' which turns out to be 'merely' the telling of Bénabou's failed attempt at creating his literary masterpiece. . . . [An] artistic tour-de-force, by turns playful and serious."—Kirkus Reviews

"What we have before us is . . . the very book [Bénabou] was trying to write all along, in a language whose clarity, luminosity and beauty call to mind Proust, Leiris and Jabes. This is a book about memory and history, the way personal memory and family history intersect and depart from a collective, historical memory and experience of a specific people at a specific moment in time."—Review of Contemporary Fiction

"[Bénabou] tells the history of a Moroccan Jewish community in the city of Meknes through the history of a family, particularly the lives of three of the author's great grandparents: Jacob, Menahem, and Mimoun. What Bénabou terms a family novel is in reality a family history mixed in with a great deal of reflection on the mysteries of memory, change, writing, and literary form."—Library Journal