Everything begins with ‘No’. A work spun from refusal, but not, like Bartleby’s refusal of the societal pressures of administration, of the crushing conformity of dominant social forms, of saying no to the present. No. it is too late for that. The no here is that of birth, it is a no to the future, of all possible futures in the wake of genocide. No. No. Never again. It is a book we pray will stop being relevant. It should lacerate us, and does.

First published as Kaddis a meg nem született gyermekértin 1990; first English translation Northwestern University Press, 1999; also translated as Kaddish for an Unborn Child, translated by Tim Wilkinson, Vintage, 2004