Death Shall Be Dethroned is the "shadow book" of Los, a Chapter, Hélène Cixous tells us. It came along after Los, but it was always thereÑhidden in her notebooks, in the Beethoven notebook, say, the one Jacques Derrida gave her. But when it tapped at the window, she ignored it until the day she had to let it in. This is just of one the enigmas Death explores as it probes an old relationship between the narrator and "Carlos." Another is her discovery on the Internet that Carlos's archives were at Princeton, and that the archive containing their correspondence was closed to the public: "Bluebeard's closet. The fruit on the tree of Good and Evil. You shall not open." Death Shall Be Dethroned is the logbook of Los, a Chapter. It owes its life to the death of a lover.

Hélène Cixous is one of the world's leading writers. She is the founder and former director of the Centre de Recherches en Études Féminines at Paris VIII.