Like Alain-Robbe Grillet, Georges Perec, and the great Oulipo writers, Swiss writer Jurg Laederach constructs seamless narratives based on sly compositional strategies. The phone refuses to ring. I sit here on 82nd Street; no, on 83rd; no, on 81st; I forget where I am. The phone refuses to ring, to tear me out of this enforced solitude, which I know only too well. This solitude that makes me sick and stirs me to tears, but surely not...