Description

Translated by Elna Rivera (Black Square Editions, paperback)

Publication Date: November 1, 2021

Publisher Marketing: “The elegy is the arrival and nothing but. Phantomb is the book for the children, on their behalf–of death.

Crack. Permanent displacement.

Not replaced, look at the space between the inserted cardboard and the metal or wood edges, hovering, not replaced, not replaced the space, not replaced the heart of him, and of him, inaudible beats hovering.”

Translators Note:
hantome (here translated as phantomb) is a word the author made up out of two words: hante meaning haunted” and fantome meaning phantom. In French, fantome carries an additional meaning; it can mean a card that is left on a library shelf to show that a book has been borrowed (see the Larousse definition that Howald uses as an epigraph). Wanting to give some of the flavor of these various meanings in English, I combined the word phantom and the word tomb to make the word phantomb.