This book is missing words, not those you are reading now, which adorn its exterior; these are inevitable, and in this case, their role is to express an absence, their absence from the rest of the book. This book is without text. Not that there are pages and spaces lacking to accommodate it; on the contrary, everything is prepared, measured, and arranged to receive what ultimately never came. For this book without words is not without images and plans, paintings and maps, etc. Everything is there to most often illustrate, emphasize, and complement a text whose framework nevertheless remains here—the graphic parergon, what typographers strangely call a “template.” The discourse, if it had been spoken, would have found its space there; instead, there is emptiness. And one does not know whether this emptiness is the sign of a faded presence or an absent text. Were sentences written and then removed, or did they fail to materialize at the threshold of formulation? Would the object of this book resist enunciation? What is this book about, after all? What could it be about that can be seen but not said? One can write the word. COUNTRY. This book speaks, without any other words, of a country—France.