You can also hear the authors:

• www.lyrikline.org: Poetry from all over the world
• www.poetryarchive.org: American Poets
  

Georges Perec, born 1936 in Paris to Polish-Jewish parents. His father died in 1940 at the front, his mother was deported to Auschwitz in 1942. Perec spent his childhood travelling between Paris and the town of the two ‘Vs’ that is amalgamated simply as ‘W’ – Villard-de-Lans et Lans-en-Vercors (see “W ou le souvenir d'enfance”, 1975). After his literature studies, he met Marcel Bénabou and became an archivist at the Centre national de la recherche scientifique (CNRS) and published his first articles in the “Partisans” review. His first novel was then published – “Les Choses” (1965, (in German, “Die Dinge”). He was awarded the Prix Renaudot for this “sociological” novel.

In 1967 Perec became a member of Oulipo (Ouvroir de Littérature Potentielle) and was one of their most important representatives. He experiments with all kinds of formal constraints: “La Disparition” (1969, in German “Anton Voyls Fortgang”) is a novel that dispenses with the letter ‘e’ (a lipogram), whereas “Les Revenentes” (1972) only includes the ‘e’-vowel. His most ambitious novel, “La Vie mode d’emploi” (1978, in German “Das Leben Gebrauchsanweisung”) – awarded the prix Médicis – comprises a loose collection of stories that can be combined like pieces of a puzzle and multiplies the narrative and semantic constraints. Perec’s work revolves around the articulation of three different fields: the everyday, autobiography and the “taste of stories” (Hervé Le Tellier). A playful dimension forms an unconditional part of this, as do the search for identity and ‘angst’ about loss.