The Crab Nebula is comprised of fifty-two vivid chapters that provide startling insights into the existence of this nebulous man named Crab: his nightmarish - and none too solid - physique, his mysterious absence from the pages of history, his birth in prison, his never having been born at all. In his portrait of Crab, Eric Chevillard gives us a character who is genuinely strange and curiously like ourselves. A postmodernist novel par excellence, The Crab Nebula parodies literary conventions, deconstructs narrative and meaning, and combines absurdity and hopelessness with irony and humor.