Georges Perec

Considerada desde su aparición como una obra maestra y se le concedió el prestigioso Premio Médicis. Con los años su importancia no ha dejado de crecer. Así, esta obra maestra inclasificable de la que se ha dicho que es un compendio tan enciclopédico como la comedia de Dante o los cuentos de Canterbury de Chaucer, y, por su ruptura con la tradición, tan estimulante como el Ulises de Joyce- fue galardonada como la mejor novela de la década 1975-1985 en la encuesta realizada por Le Monde en el salon du livre de 1985.entre la primer aidea de la noveal y su realización transcurrieron nueve años. Perec hablaba así de su proyecto: en otra ocasión afirmaba que efectivamente, cada capítulo se parece a un fragmento de un gigantesco, fascinante puzzle, cuyo epicentro lo constituye una casa parisina de la calle Simon-Crubellier: Cada pieza del puzzle es un capítulo y lleva una indicación sobre sus inquilinos de hoy y de ayer, reconstruyendo los objetos, las acciones los recuerdos, las sensaciones, las fantasmagoría. Siguiendo el orden sabiamente entretejido por Perec, asistimos a la formación de un microcosmos construido por una serie de vivencias, una prodigiosa concatenación de existencias, de vida vivida o simplemente soñada.

Georges Perec contempla las muchas maneras en que ocupamos el espacio que nos rodea, describe los elementos comunes con los que estamos familiarizados de una manera sorprendente y engorrosa, mientras relata su psicoanálisis, permaneciendo reticente sobre sus sentimientos o representando el París de su infancia sin dejar rastros de sentimentalismo. Entretanto, Nos damos cuenta de que estamos en presencia de un notable escritor virtuoso.

As his country is torn apart by social and political anarchy, A Void's protagonist, Anton Vowl, a chronic insomniac, is unaccountably found missing. Ransacking his Paris flat, a group of his faithful companions trawl through his diary for any indication, for any faint hint, as to his location. All that it brings to light, though, is Vowl's liking (uncannily similar to his author's) for parody, wordplay and dazzling fictional constructs, constructs which continually risk spiralling out of control. And, gradually, insidiously, a ghost from Vowl's past starts to cast its malignant shadow...

"In 1979, Georges Perec wrote a brief entertainment for a publisher's catalogue, and "The Winter Journey" quickly became his most frequently reprinted short story. Set on the eve of the Second World War, it recounts the discovery of a great literary masterpiece that conceals a scandalous secret at the heart of modern French literature ... The present volume includes, and then extends Perec's brief parable. Over two decades his fellow Oulipians have written twenty sequels to this tale, between 1992 and January of this year."--Page of cover.

"One overcast weekend in October 1974, Georges Perec set out in quest of the "infraordinary": the humdrum, the nonevent, the everyday--"what happens," as he put it, "when nothing happens." His choice of locale was Place Saint-Sulpice where, ensconced behind first one café window, then another, he spent three days recording everything to pass through his field of vision: the people walking by; the buses and driving-school cars caught in their routes; the pigeons moving suddenly en masse, as if in accordance to some mysterious command; the wedding (and then funeral) at the church in the center of the square; the signs, symbols, and slogans littering everything; and the darkness that eventually absorbs it all. In An Attempt at Exhausting a Place in Paris, Perec compiled a melancholic, slightly eerie, and oddly touching document in which existence boils down to rhythm, writing turns into time, and the line between the empirical and the surreal grows surprisingly thin."--Page 4 of cover.