Walter Abish, author of the critically acclaimed novel How German Is It, had a challenging idea once: to compose an experimental work of fiction that plays with the English alphabet in a constrained manner. And in 1974, he published Alphabetical Africa, a novella that stood as a monument to his idea, built to completion.
It's a one-off work of literature, bold in its ambition, that has never been attempted by anyone else and probably will never be attempted by anyone again. The book consists of 51 chapters of varying lengths. The first chapter is composed entirely and only of words starting with the letter 'a', the second chapter with letters 'a' and 'b', and with each subsequent chapter he adds a letter from the alphabetical series up until, with the 26th, he composes a chapter made of words starting with the entire English alphabet of 26 letters. In the 27th chapter, he subtracts 'z' from the composition and hence it consists of the first 25 letters, and with each subsequent chapter thereafter, one letter is subtracted from the alphabetical series backwards until, at the 51st chapter, he completes the circle and is back to using only 'a'-lettered words.
That idea might intrigue you or it might perhaps even repel you, as some readers distance themselves from disorientating or alienating works of art. But if you belong to the former, rest assured, this is about the most fun literary treats can get. Again, rest assured, all the sentences and sentence structures used in the book conform to the standard English grammar, though they may not as easily be understood as the normal sentences we find in ordinary usage, especially the chapters made of one or a few letters. But that's where the fun lies. An excerpt from first chapter thus goes...
Ages ago, an archeologist, Albert, alias Arthur, ably attended an archaic African armchair affair at Antibes, attracting attention as an archeologist and an atheist. Ahhh, atheism... Anyhow, Albert advocated assisting African ants. Ants? All are astounded. Ants? Absurd.
...and one from the second chapter goes...
Alex and Allen are both bribing a building attendant after building another apartment backstairs, but both also brood after burying a body, brood about Bantu's better beaches and accommodating Alva.
Sentences vary in length, from short and average ones like these to really long ones, and some are quite hard to understand (I've quoted the easy ones above). It's far from being an easy catch in book stores, but thanks to Flipkart, an imported edition is available there for a slightly higher price (considering it is imported and the fact that it is a novella), but then, when the treat is so great, shedding a few extra bucks wouldn't hurt your wallet. A limited sample can be previewed on Google Books if you are curious.
