Bøger i Verba Mundi (Paperback) serien

From the author of Life A User's Manual comes an equally mind-bending novel: an interpretive vision of the Holocaust and a dystopian world.W or The Memory of Childhood is a narrative that reflects a great writer's effort to come to terms with his childhood during the Nazi occupation of France.Perec tells two parallel stories. The first is autobiographical, describing his wartime boyhood. The second tale, denser, more disturbing, more horrifying, is the allegorical story of W, a mythical island off Tierra del Fuego governed by the thrall of the Olympic "ideal," where losers are tortured and winners held in temporary idolatry. As the reader soon discovers, W is a place where "it is more important to be lucky than to be deserving," and "you have to fight to live...no recourse, no mercy, no salvation, not even any hope that time will sort things out."Perec's memory of the Holocaust and vision about its meaning has resulted in an astonishing achievement that stands with the best of his work.

Perec has rightfully assumed his position in the pantheon of truly original writers of the past century. Godine has issued all but one is his books in this country, including his masterpiece Life A User's Manual. Here, in one volume, are three "easy pieces" by the master of the verbal firecracker and Gallic wit. The novella "The Exeter Text" contains all those E's that were omitted from A Void (Perec hated waste) and no other vowel (honest). In "Which Moped with Chrome-Plated Handlebars at the Back of the Yard?" we are introduced to Sergeant Henri Pollak and his vehicle (the aforementioned moped) that carried him between Vincennes and Montparnasse; in "A Gallery Portrait," the sensation of the 1913 exhibition in Pittsburgh depicts the artists' patron, beer baron Hermann Raffke, sitting in front of his huge art collection, which includes (of course) "A Gallery Portrait" of the baron sitting before "A Gallery Portrait," etc.

Originally published: Z'urich: Nagel & Kimche, 1992.