Georges Perec

One of the most dazzling and ingeniously contrived works of twentieth-century fiction, an entire microcosm is brought to life in a Paris apartment block. Serge Valene, one of the inhabitants, has conceived the idea of a painting that will show in exact detail the inside of each apartment within the building—every person, every object. As he thinks of his picture,...

Available for the first time in Black Classics Species of Spaces and Other Pieces by Georges Perec showcases some of the most entertaining and spirited essays of his age. Perec's literary output was remarkably varied in form and style. This generous selection of his non-fictional work also demonstrates his characteristic lightness of touch, wry humour, and accessibility.

A long-suffering employee in a big corporation has summoned up the courage to ask for a raise. But as he runs through the looming encounter in his mind, his neuroses come to the surface: What is the best day to see the boss? What if he doesn’t offer you a seat when you go into his office? The Art of...

Things: A Story of the Sixties by Georges Perec offers a cool, exacting portrait of a couple torn apart by consumer desire. A young couple build their lives around the objects they long to own. From furniture to clothes to carefully imagined interiors, their desires shape their sense of who they are - and who they might become. Yet satisfaction...

A problem of space first of all, then a problem of order One of the most singular and extravagant imaginations of the twentieth century, the novelist and essayist Georges Perec was a true original who delighted in wordplay, puzzles, taxonomies and seeing the extraordinary in the everyday. In these virtuoso writings about books and language, he discusses different ways of...

Two thematically-related novellas by Georges Perec in one volume. In each, Perec probes our obsession with society's trappings-the seductive mass of things that masquerade as stability and meaning. In Things: A Story of the Sixties, Jerome and Sylvie, a young, upwardly mobile couple lust for the good life, caught between the fantasy of "the film they would have liked to...