Eunoia - Softcover

Christian Bok's dazzling word games are the literary sensation of the year. * * The Times * * Extraordinary, outrageous, irresistible - a must for verbivores. -- Gyles Brandreth A book that is easy, and pleasurable, to read. Eunoia is characterized not by obvious sweat and strain, but by playfulness, fluidity and self-conscious wit . . . At other times, the rhythms bounce and tumble, creating an impression of haste despite the meticulousness and graft of the book's composition . . .The book's freshest insights pertain to the resilience and manipulability of language. * * Irish Times * * No mere Christmas stocking filler for Countdown fans. Rather, it's an ingenious little novel . . . playful and irreverent . . . charming. * * Metro * * Amazing . . . impressive . . . It's beautiful, it's funny and it's moving. * * Globe and Mail * * Brilliant . . . beautiful and strange. * * Today Programme, BBC Radio 4 Interview * * This writing is brill nihilism.. this little book is an extraordinary exercise in crooked spelling. -- Philip Howard * * Guardian * * Rhyme and repetition create an intoxicating array of images and allusion . . . The close attention to sentence construction creates a refreshing poetry, where the manipulation of single letters is used to elicit startling beauty. Bok has produced an ode to the alphabet, where the power of vowels, verbs and alliteration is inspiring. -- Nathan Dunne * * Daily Telegraph * *

'Eunoia', which means 'beautiful thinking', is the shortest English word to contain all five vowels. This book also contains them all, except that each one appears by itself in its own chapter. A unique personality for each vowel soon emerges: A is courtly, E is elegiac, I is lyrical, O is jocular, U is obscene. A triumphant feat, seven years in the making, Eunoia is as playful as it is awe-inspiring.