Modern history is haunted by the disasters of the century - world wars, concentration camps, Hiroshima, and the Holocaust - grief, anger, terror, and loss beyond words, but still close, still impending. How can we write or think about disaster when by its very nature it defies speech and compels silence, burns books and shatters meaning? "The Writing of the Disaster" reflects upon efforts to abide in disaster's infinite threat. First published in French in 1980, it takes up the most serious tasks of writing: to describe, explain, and redeem when possible, and to admit what is not possible. Neither offers consolation.Maurice Blanchot has been praised on both sides of the Atlantic for his fiction and criticism. The philosopher Emmanuel Levinas once remarked that Blanchot's writing is a 'language of pure transcendence, without correlative.' Literary theorist and critic Geoffrey Hartman remarked that Blanchot's influence on contemporary writers 'cannot be overestimated.' Ann Smock is a professor of French at the University of California at Berkeley. She has translated Blanchot's "The Space of Literature", also available as a Bison Book. Jeffrey Mehlman, a professor of French at Boston University, is the author of many books and articles on twentieth-century France and French literature.

《从卡夫卡到卡夫卡》汇集了13篇布朗肖论卡夫卡的文章。从卡夫卡开始，到卡夫卡结束，这是一部向文学大师卡夫卡致敬的书。卡夫卡对布朗肖的影响在布朗肖的著名文论《文学空间》里已经明显地体现出来了。当写作成为“祈祷的形式”，毫无疑问写作是出自其他形式的，即使在我们这个不幸的世界的视景下，写作已经停止成为作品，卡夫卡在宽恕的时刻认出了文学的追寻者，并且明白不应该再写了——一个字也太多！ ……卡夫卡想毁掉其作品，可能是因为他认为那必会倍增众人的误解。在此混沌的研读过程里，我们成为作品的一部分，实际上，我们就是映射在某些残篇、未尽作品之上，被所识与被所掩的部分光线，因而，总是更加加剧了那些作品的分裂，最后碎裂成细尘那般大小，如同总是与道德脱不了干系的遗作，在面对这类多半遭到长篇大论的评论所侵袭的寂静之作，这类成为可以无限发表题材的未刊之作，这类沦为历史注脚的永恒之作时，不得不扪心自问，是否卡夫卡自己，早就在辉煌的胜利中，预感到同等程度的灾难。