Jonathan Safran Foer’s experimental novel Tree of Codes is a story told by cutting out most of the words of a collection by this author originally titled “Cinnamon Shops.” For 10 points each:
[10h] Name this writer, most of whose work was lost after being murdered by a Nazi during the Holocaust. In a story by this author, the narrator’s father turns into a crab who is boiled by his wife for dinner.
ANSWER: Bruno Schulz (The story is “Father’s Last Escape.”)
[10m] The cutout method in Tree of Codes has drawn comparisons to Georges Perec’s use of this writing constraint in his novel A Void, which Warren Motte called “the struggles of a Holocaust orphan trying to make sense out of absence.”
ANSWER: it’s missing the letter e [or equivalents like not using the letter e; prompt on lipogrammatic with “what letter is omitted?”]
[10e] Foer’s afterword to Tree of Codes analogizes the Western Wall in Jerusalem to one of these objects. Death narrates Liesel Meminger’s life in Nazi Germany in a Markus Zusak novel titled for a Thief of these objects.
ANSWER: books [accept The Book Thief or “This Book and The Book”] (“The Book” is intentional capitalization.)
<CM, European Literature>