Biography
Georges Perec was born in Paris in 1936 to Polish Jewish immigrants; his father was killed as a soldier in 1940, and his mother was deported in 1943 and probably died in Auschwitz. He dropped out of history and sociology studies at the Sorbonne and from 1961 to 1978 worked as an archivist in a CNRS neurophysiology research laboratory in Paris. His first published novel, “Les Choses” (1965, Things), won the Prix Renaudot; from 1967 he belonged to the Oulipo group, which explores writing under self-imposed formal rules, and in 1969 he wrote an entire novel, “La Disparition”, without the letter e. His major works also include “W ou le souvenir d’enfance” (1975), which interweaves childhood memories with a fictional island narrative, and “La Vie mode d’emploi” (1978, Life: A User's Manual), which won the Prix Médicis. From the late 1960s he wrote radio plays with his German translator Eugen Helmlé for Saarländischer Rundfunk and WDR, his play “L’Augmentation” (German title “Die Gehaltserhöhung”) premiered in Paris in 1970, and he later also wrote for film. Perec died in Ivry-sur-Seine in 1982.
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