Read more
Both an affectionate portrait of mid-century Paris and a daring memoir, Georges Perec's I Remember is now available for the first time in English, with an introduction by David Bellos. In 480 numbered statements, all beginning identically with 'I remember', Perec records a stream of individual memories of a childhood in post-war France, while posin
About the author
Georges Perec, born in Paris in 1936, was a pioneering French novelist, filmmaker, documentalist and essayist. Orphaned from an early age, many of his works deal with absence, loss and identity, often through word play. He later became an eminent member of the experimental Oulipo group. He died in 1982.
Summary
Both an affectionate portrait of mid-century Paris and a daring memoir, Georges Perec's I Remember is now available for the first time in English, with an introduction by David Bellos. In 480 numbered statements, all beginning identically with 'I remember', Perec records a stream of individual memories of a childhood in post-war France, while posin
Additional text
‘A marvellously readable and entertaining book’ Shiny New Books
'A joyous, if fragmented, summoning up of an already faded world' The Spectator
‘The effect of cascading "I remembers" is unavoidably mesmerizing’ Paris Review
‘On first impressions, Perec writes as if skimming playful stones across the surface of a lake. You realise later that he is also sending little pulses down into the depths. In his inventive puckish ways, he encourages us to look at what lies behind and within the familiar. In this sense, he is not just a brilliant writer but a kind and continually prescient one’ Darran Anderson, author of Imaginary Cities
'So full of interest and memory . . . I have enjoyed it so much' Dame Margaret Drabble
‘One of the oddest works of literature ever written’ David Bellos, from the Introduction
'Je me souviens is only a small piece of Perec-autobiography, but it is an appealing one, suggestive and whimsical' Complete Review
Praise for Georges Perec
'To read Georges Perec one must be ready to abandon oneself to a spirit of play. His books are studded with intellectual traps, allusions and secret systems, and ... they are prodigiously entertaining' Paul Auster
'One of the most singular literary personalities in the world, a writer who resembled absolutely no one else' Italo Calvino
'Perec is a great storyteller and a wry humorist' The Telegraph
‘Perec’s passion for classification, for enumeration, for lists, for patterns, for the thinginess of things, is strangely captivating and, despite an underlying melancholy, exhilarating’ Margaret Drabble, New Statesman
