Verba Mundi (Paperback)

1 primary work • 4 total works

Life

by Georges Perec

Published 19 October 1987

This marvellous book is one of the most ingenious works of modern fiction, an entire microcosm brought to life in a Paris apartment block. Serge Val ne wants to create an elaborate painting of the building he has made his home for the last sixty years. As he plans his picture, he contemplates the lives of all the people he has ever known there. Chapter by chapter, the narrative moves around the building revealing a marvellously diverse cast of characters in a series of ever more unlikely tales, which range from an avenging murderer to an eccentric English millionaire who has devised the ultimate pastime...

W or The Memory of Childhood

by Georges Perec

Published 17 October 1988

W consists of two parallel tales Perec s disturbing account of his wartime childhood is interspersed with the surreal tale of W., an island state based on the rules of sport. In the fictional narrative a man adopts the identity of one Gaspard Winckler. When he undertakes a journey in search of the real Winckler and his fate, he leads the reader into the descriptions of the island-state where citizens are forced to compete in athletic competitions for the basics of life. Intertwined with the fictional narrative are Perec s stories of his past his father s death in the French army, his mother s transportation to Auschwitz, his own upbringing with relatives and his attempts to pin down his true memories rather than memories created for him by language, by images, by others. Fiction and autobiography interweave throughout Perec s text until, in a final chapter, the two literary categories seem to merge together.

Three by Perec

by Georges Perec

Published 13 August 2004

Three works of short fiction by Georges Perec. "One of the most singular literary personalities in the world."--Italo Calvino

Georges Perec's mastery of absurdist fiction are on full display in this collection. As Richard Eder in The Los Angeles Times wrote, "Perec's artistry has achieved a perfect balance between allure and imponderability."

The novella The Exeter Text contains all those e's that were omitted from his novel, A Void (Perec hated waste) and no other vowel. In Which Moped with Chrome-Plated Handlebars at the Back of the Yard? we meet Sergeant Henri Pollak and his vehicle that carries him between Vincennes and Montparnasse. A Gallery Portrait is about a portrait, called "A Gallery Portrait," of the Pittsburgh beer baron Hermann Raffke sitting in front of his portrait which depicts Raffke sitting in front of his portrait.

Mind-bending short fiction from a 20th century master.

A Void

by Georges Perec

Published 3 October 1994

As much a masterpiece of translation as a novel, A Void contains not one single letter e anywhere in the main body of the text. This clever and unusual novel is full of plots and sub-plots, of trails in pursuit of trails and linguistic conjuring tricks