Species of Spaces, by Georges Perec, is a curious book.  Not quite a collection of poetry, not quite a collection of essays, it attempts to define, catalog, and generally shed light on the different layers of spaces that permeate our everyday lives.  Perec’s epigraph, the “Map of the Ocean” from Lewis Carroll’s “The Hunting of the Snark,” provides an important lens through which to view this text.  This is no traditional map, however: rather than lines, points, or recognizable geographic features, this map is nothing more than a space of blank page delineated from the rest of the blank page by a thin black line and a caption. 

Haber is a scholar of comparative literature whose research interests include literary constraint, the city, and theories of selfhood in nineteenth and twentieth century French literature and thought.