* Georges Perec - Life: A User's Manual and other works (15 books)

GEORGES PEREC (1936 – 1982) was a French novelist, filmmaker, documentalist, and essayist, and one of the most singular and extravagant imaginations of the twentieth century.  He was a member of the Oulipo group, a loose gathering of (mainly) French-speaking writers and mathematicians who sought to create works using constrained writing techniques.

Many of Perec's novels and essays deal with absence, loss, and identity.  They abound with experimental word play, lists and attempts at classification, and they are usually tinged with melancholy.  His first novel, THINGS: A STORY OF THE SIXTIES (Les Choses, 1965), 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".  The novel won the Prix Renaudot and became the cult book for a generation.

Perec is noted for his constrained writing. His 300-page novel A VOID (1969) is a lipogram, written with natural sentence structure and correct grammar, but using only words that do not contain the letter "e".  His novella THE EXETER TEXT: JEWELS, SECRETS, SEX (1972), included in the collection THREE, is a complementary univocalic piece in which the letter "e" is the only vowel used.

W, OR THE MEMORY OF CHILDHOOD (1975) is a semi-autobiographical work which is hard to classify.  Two alternating narratives make up the volume: one, a fictional outline of a remote island country called "W", at first appears to be a utopian society modelled on the Olympic ideal, but is gradually exposed as a horrifying, totalitarian prison much like a concentration camp.  The second narrative is a description of Perec's childhood during and after World War II.  Both narratives converge towards the end, highlighting the common theme of the Holocaust.

His most famous novel, LIFE: A USER'S MANUAL (1978), is a tapestry of interwoven stories and ideas as well as literary and historical allusions, based on the lives of the inhabitants of a fictitious Parisian apartment block.  It was written according to a complex plan of writing constraints and is primarily constructed from several elements, each adding a layer of complexity.  The 99 chapters of his 600-page novel move like a knight's tour of a chessboard around the room plan of the building, describing the rooms and stairwell and telling the stories of the inhabitants.  At the end, it is revealed that the whole book actually takes place in a single moment, with a final twist that is an example of "cosmic irony".


The following books are in ePUB and/or PDF format as indicated:

* 53 Days [tr. Bellos] (Godine, 2000) – PDF^
* A Void [tr. Adair] (Harvill, 1994) – PDF^
* An Attempt at Exhausting a Place in Paris [tr. Lowenthal] (Wakefield, 2010) – PDF^
* Art of Asking Your Boss for a Raise [tr. Bellos] (Verso, 2011) – ePUB + PDF^
* Ellis Island [tr. Mathews] (New Directions, 2021) – ePUB
* I Remember [tr. Terry] (Gallic, 2020) – ePUB
* La Boutique Obscure: 124 Dreams [tr. Becker] (Melville House, 2012) – ePUB
* Les Choses: A Story of the Sixties [tr. Lane] (Grove, 1967) – PDF^
* Life: A User's Manual [tr. Bellos] (Godine, 1987) – ePUB + PDF^
* Portrait of a Man Known [tr. Bellos] (Chicago, 2015) – ePUB + PDF
* Species of Spaces & Other Pieces [tr. Sturrock] (Penguin, 1999) – PDF
* Things / A Man Asleep [tr. Bellos & Leak] (Harvill, 1991) – ePUB + PDF^
* Three [tr. Monk] (Harvill, 1996) – PDF^
* W, or The Memory of Childhood [tr. Bellos] (Godine, 1988) – ePUB + PDF^

== BIOGRAPHY ==

* Bellos, David - Georges Perec: A Life in Words (Harvill, 1999) – ePUB

PDF^ – courtesy of @Mohamed5438


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