Georges Perec

Georges Perec was born in Paris, France on 7 March 1936. He was a French novelist, filmmaker, documentalist, and essayist. He was a member of the Oulipo group. His father died as a soldier early in the Second World War and his mother was murdered in the Holocaust, and many of his works deal with absence, loss, and identity, often through word play.

Many of Perec's novels and essays abound with experimental word play, lists and attempts at classification, and they are usually tinged with melancholy.

Perec's first novel Les Choses: Une Histoire des Années Soixante (Things: A Story of the Sixties) (1965) was awarded the Prix Renaudot.

Perec's most famous novel La Vie mode d'emploi (Life a User's Manual) was published in 1978.

A heavy smoker, he was diagnosed with lung cancer. He died on 3 March 1982, in Ivry-sur-Seine, only forty-five years old; his ashes are held at the columbarium of the Père Lachaise Cemetery.

Georges Perec (1936-1982)

Species of Spaces and other pieces(1997)