Born in Cairo on 16 April 1912, son of Jewish parents, inherited Italian citizenship from his paternal grandfather. In Egypt, received a French education and wrote his first texts. In 1929, after publishing brief anti-fascist magazine written in French, is threatened with deportation by the Italian consul in Cairo. In 1940, he was arrested by the British authorities, charged by its Italian fascist, but is released to prove his membership in fascist leagues. In 1942, he was transferred to Palestine before the advancing Nazi troops of Rommel. Nine months later, he returned to Egypt, where he founded the Association of Friends French about important Francophone intellectuals that gather. In 1957, Egypt expelled by the government of Nasser, he was exiled to France. In 1967, adopt French nationality. He died in Paris on January 2, 1991 His work revolves around The Book of Questions (1963), poetic prose that drives the successive writing "books" whose reading provides, in Derrida's words, "a certain experience of silence apophatic, absence, the desert, the open road less traveled, the deportee memory, mourning, mourning all the impossible. "Edmond Jabes has been published in this Editorial From the desert to the book (2000).