Georges Perec

David Bellos

things-a-story-of-the-sixties-with-a-man-asleep

About us

About Us (Header 4)

Kate-Atkinson

James-Baldwin

Marian-Keyes

haruki-murakami-320×320-1

Richard-Osman

Malorie Blackman

Lisa-Jewell

Charlie-Mackesy

Authors (Header 3)

Children&#039;s

Company

Discover

Fiction

Non-fiction

Penguin Classics

Penguin Shop (Header 5)

Useful links

Work with us

Brief Notes on the Art and Manner of Arranging One's Books

W or The Memory of Childhood

Species of Spaces and Other Pieces

A User's Manual

Life

A Void

Things: A Story of the Sixties with A Man Asleep

Discover the Penguin books that shaped us

Required reading for anyone interested in the evolution of this modern master

As a witty attack on consumerism Things is as much a parable of the Nineties as it is a story of the Sixties

Perec's first novel is a masterpiece of elegaic mockery

Things, Perec's first novel, is an innovative, perceptive and even moving study of corrosive consumerism

[A Man Asleep is] grimly obsessing...one turns the pages with unlikely fascination

[A Man Asleep] Bleak, benighted, uncompromisingly unhappy, this is not the book to read if you already have difficulty in finding reasons for getting out of bed

A Man Asleep is true to its subject and also readable...a remarkable achievement

Perec's fiction is a delight to all who care for real literature

Two striking, clumsy, romantic studies in extremism

Things: A Story of the Sixties is the story of a young couple who want to enjoy life, but the only way they know how to do so is through ownership of 'things'. Perec's first novel won the Prix Renaudot and became the cult book for a generation. 
 
In A Man Asleep, a young student embarks upon a disturbing and exhaustive pursuit of indifference, following his experience in non-existence with relentless logic.

Two brilliant, witty and subversive stories from the modern master - cult classics for the 60s generation

Georges Perec (1936-82) won the Prix Renaudot in 1965 for his first novel Things: A Story of the Sixties, and went on to exercise his unrivalled mastery of language in almost every imaginable kind of writing, from the apparently trivial to the deeply personal. He composed acrostics, anagrams, autobiography, criticism, crosswords, descriptions of dreams, film scripts, heterograms, lipograms, memories, palindromes, plays, poetry, radio plays, recipes, riddles, stories short and long, travel notes, univocalics, and, of course, novels. Life: A User's Manual, which draws on many of Perec's other works, appeared in 1978 after nine years in the making and was acclaimed a masterpiece to put beside Joyce's Ulysses. It won the Prix Medicis and established Perec's international reputation.

Things: A Story of the Sixties with A Man Asleep

Format:

Buy the book from:

Required reading for anyone interested in the evolution of this modern master

As a witty attack on consumerism Things is as much a parable of the Nineties as it is a story of the Sixties

Perec's first novel is a masterpiece of elegaic mockery

Things, Perec's first novel, is an innovative, perceptive and even moving study of corrosive consumerism

[A Man Asleep is] grimly obsessing...one turns the pages with unlikely fascination

[A Man Asleep] Bleak, benighted, uncompromisingly unhappy, this is not the book to read if you already have difficulty in finding reasons for getting out of bed

A Man Asleep is true to its subject and also readable...a remarkable achievement

Perec's fiction is a delight to all who care for real literature

Two striking, clumsy, romantic studies in extremism

About Georges Perec

Follow penguin

Follow ladybird

Follow puffin

Sign up to the Penguin newsletter