The Sphinx remains genderless
Sphinx By: Anne Garréta Translated by: Emma Ramadan (Deep Vellum Publishing) At first glance Sphinx comes across as a simplistic romance story, void of the cliches and forced drama. It is a love story bare to the bone, it needed to be, in order for Garréta to pull this daring stunt with language worthy of the infamous Oulipian standards. At the age of twenty-three Anne Garréta managed to enter the French literary scene through its widest gates with the publishing her first novel Sphinx in 1986 which was immediately recognized as being a landmark in linguistic and literary accomplishment. Sphinx tells the story of two people from opposite worlds, both figuratively and literally, who fall accidentally and then passionately in and out of love for each other. A struggle written about in long, poetic form by great novelists yet when approached by Garréta it seems her desire was not to just entertain but more impo...
