Fiction by the French author Georges Perec which takes the form of pastiches of academic and scientific papers.

Set in a Paris apartment block, this novel describes in minute detail the lives of the inhabitants and the apartments they inhabit at a specific moment in time.

'Things' is the story of a young couple who want to enjoy life, but the only way they know how to do so is through ownership of 'things'. 'In A Man Asleep', a young student embarks upon a disturbing and exhaustive pursuit of indifference, following his experience in non-existence with relentless logic.

Combining fiction and autobiography in a quite unprecedented way, Georges Perec leads the reader inexorably towards the horror that lies at the origin of the post-World War Two world and at the crux of his own identity.

One of the most significant literary personalities in the world. Italo Calvino
Georges Perec, author of the highly acclaimed Life: A User s Manual, was only forty-six when he died in 1982. Despite a tragic childhood, during which his mother was deported to Auschwitz, Perec produced some of the most entertaining essays of the age. His literary output was deliberately varied in form and style and this generous selection of Perec s non-fictional work, the first to appear in English, demonstrates his characteristic lightness of touch, wry humor, and accessibility.
As he...

In 1979, Georges Perec (1936-1982) wrote a brief entertainment called -The Winter Journey- for a publisher's catalogue. It quickly became his most frequently reprinted short story. Set on the eve of World War II, it recounts the discovery of a great literary masterpiece that conceals a scandalous secret at the heart of the whole of modern French literature. Every aspect of literary history will have to be rewritten. However, the War intervenes, and the work is lost forever. The present volume, a kind of -hyper-novel, - includes and then extends this brief parable, which turns out to be so...

Perec was a leading exponent of French literary surrealism who found humour - and pathos - in the human need for classification. Thoughts of Sorts is itself unclassifiable, a unique collection of philosophical riffs on his obsession with lists, puzzles, catalogues, and taxonomies. Introduced by Margaret Drabble.

Puckish and playful, Georges Perec infused avant-garde and experimental fiction with a wit and wonder that belied the serious concerns and concepts that underpinned it. A prominent member of the OuLiPo, and an abiding influence on fiction writers today, Perec used formal constraints to dazzling effect in such works as A Void--a murder mystery that contains nary an "e"--and Life A User's Manual, in which an apartment building, systematically canvassed, unfolds secrets and, ultimately offers a reflection on creation, destruction, and the devotion to art.

Before embarking on...

Perecova novela Co je to tam vzadu na dvoře za kolo s chromovanými řídítky? (1966) vychází z oulipovské tradice „potenciální literatury“ a na první pohled se vyznačuje rozvernou hravostí, jazykovou komikou i formální vytříbeností. Čtenářovu pozornost neudržuje ani tak příběh, líčící peripetie vojína s nezapamatovatelným jménem, jehož nejdramatičtější momenty autor rozmělní opakováním bezvýznamných detailů, jako spíše styl samotný. Text totiž obsahuje téměř všechny myslitelné řečnické figury a odráží tak Perecovu snahu vyčerpat v...

Perecův román W aneb Vzpomínka z dětství (1975) kombinuje dva zdánlivě nesouvisející texty: autobiografické vyprávění o životě malého chlapce za nacistické okupace a popis fiktivního ostrova poblíž Ohňové země, ovládaného a řízeného všudypřítomnými zákony sportu. Dokonalá organizace této „ideální společnosti” postupně degraduje před očima čtenáře v dystopický obraz nelidského pekla. Obě textové roviny se tak významově propojují a svým vzájemným působením vytvářejí znepokojivý celek evokující hrůzu holokaustu.