Double or Nothing is Federman's first published novel and a classic of visual prose and experimental fiction. Four years in the making and finished in 1970, the novel was originally published in 1971 by Swallow Press, Chicago. As typesetting had turned out to be too difficult and too expensive, it was decided to photograph all the pages of the original typescript and reduce them in size for printing. The present new and definitive edition of the original typewritten version of the text was carefully proofread and designed true to the original using a digital, monospaced typeface. This is the black & white ("brown") version of the novel and volume 02a in our Raymond Federman edition which was produced in close cooperation with Simone Federman, the daughter and heir of Raymond Federman. RAYMOND FEDERMAN (1928–2009) was born in Paris, France. When he was fourteen years old, his parents and two sisters were arrested during the 1942 roundup and sent to the Auschwitz concentration camp for extermination. The boy survived because his mother had pushed him into a closet. After World War II, Federman emigrated to the USA, where he eventually became one of the most radical thinkers, critics, and influential authors of contemporary literature. In different versions, both in English and in French, he narrates the life story of a man called "Federman," always trying to decipher the gesture of his mother that saved his life. Federman received the American Book Award and his books have been translated into 14 languages.