Awaiting oblivion

Awaiting Oblivion (L'attente l'oubli) is one of the crowning works by the French philosopher and novelist Maurice Blanchot. Located at the crossroads of fiction and philosophy, it is a daring, innovative, and strikingly original experiment in literary form. Strongly reminiscent of Beckett's Waiting for Godot and Pirandello's Six Characters in Search of an Author, Awaiting Oblivion takes place in an anonymous hotel room, furnished with only a bed, an armchair, and a table. There we encounter a man and a woman who (in the words of translator John Gregg) "are alternately waiting for something to happen to them that never does and vainly trying to remember something that may have already happened to them." Blanchot's portrayal of their relationship is a penetrating reflection upon human nature, language, and literature.