"Originally published in French in 1978 as La Vie mode d'emploi by Editions Hachette Litterature, Paris"--T.p. verso.
"Originally published in French in 1978 as La Vie mode d'emploi by Editions Hachette Litterature, Paris"--T.p. verso.
"One of the great novels of the century. Suddenly and unexpectedly, the late 20th century has produced a novel on the level of Joyce, Proust, Mann, Kafka, and Nabokov."--Boston Globe
From the confessions of a racing cyclist to the plans of an avenging murderer, from a young ethnographer obsessed with a Sumatran tribe to the death of a trapeze artist, Life is stories connected by a single moment in time (8:00 p.m. on June 23, 1975) in an apartment block in the XVIIth arrondissement of Paris. Chapter by chapter, room by room, an extraordinary rich cast of characters is revealed in a series of tales that are bizarre, unlikely, moving, funny, or (sometimes) quite ordinary. The apartment block's one hundred rooms are arranged in a magic square, and the book, too, contains a staggering range of literary puzzles and allusions, acrostics, problems of chess and logic, crosswords, and mathematical formula. All for the reader to solve.
“Praise for Life A User's Manual "Those who have a taste for the unusual, for books that create worlds unto themselves, will be dazzled by this crazy-quilt monument to the imagination."-- The New York Times Book Review "In this wondrously optimistic book, he sidles through the lives of the inhabitants of a single Paris apartment block and manages to convey scintillas of every aspect of the human condition--proving that, while ultimately without point, life is a continuum rich beyond belief, and so very well worth living."-- The Week Magazine "This elaborate jigsaw puzzle of a novel has drawn comparisons to the masterworks of twentieth-century literature."-- Rolling Stone "A classic of contemporary fiction."-- Publishers Weekly "Absolutely indispensable...a postmodern work that you shouldn't miss out on."-- The Huffington Post”
Praise for Life A User's Manual
"Those who have a taste for the unusual, for books that create worlds unto themselves, will be dazzled by this crazy-quilt monument to the imagination."--The New York Times Book Review
"In this wondrously optimistic book, he sidles through the lives of the inhabitants of a single Paris apartment block and manages to convey scintillas of every aspect of the human condition--proving that, while ultimately without point, life is a continuum rich beyond belief, and so very well worth living."--The Week Magazine
"This elaborate jigsaw puzzle of a novel has drawn comparisons to the masterworks of twentieth-century literature."--Rolling Stone
"A classic of contemporary fiction."--Publishers Weekly
"Absolutely indispensable...a postmodern work that you shouldn't miss out on."--The Huffington Post
Georges Perec was one of the most important experimental writers ofthe twentieth century. His many works include the novels Life: AUser's Manual; W, Or, The Memory of Childhood; and The Art of Asking Your Boss for a Raise.
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