A token of the world's instability and of human powerlessness, chance is inevitably a crucial literary theme. It also presents formal problems: Must the artist struggle against chance in pursuit of a flawless work? Or does chance have a place in the artistic process or product? This book examines the representation and staging of chance in literature through the study of a specific case--the work of the twentieth-century French writer Georges Perec (1936-82).

In Constraining Chance, James explores the ways in which Perec's texts exploit the possibilities of chance, by both...