53 Days - by Georges Perec (Paperback)

About the Book

Celebrate Georges Perec with "53 Days," available in paperback for the first time! At the time of his death, Perec was hard at work on this absorbing, allusive, and playful literary thriller. "53 Days," is the ultimate detective story: the narrator, a French colonial teacher, is hot on the trail of famous crime writer Robert Serval, who has mysteriously vanished. Perec lures the reader into a labyrinth of mirror-stories--which are mirrored in turn by Perec's own riddling drafts and notes for the end of "53 Days," reconstructed here by fellow Oulipians Harry Mathews and Jacques Roubaud. "53 Days," is a supremely satisfying, engrossing, and truly original mystery. To read Georges Perec one must be ready to abandon oneself to a spirit of play. His books are studded with intellectual traps, allusions and secret systems, and...they are prodigiously entertaining.--Paul Auster

Book Synopsis

A puzzling mystery and the last, unfinished work by Georges Perec--a writer Italo Calvino called, "One of the most singular literary personalities in the world." The narrator, a teacher in a tropical French colony, is trying to track down the famous crime-writer Robert Serval, who has mysteriously disappeared. Serval has left behind the manuscript of his last, unfinished novel, which may contain clues to his fate.
Before his death, Perec completed 11 of a planned 28 chapters but left extensive drafts and notes for his friends and frequent collaborators, Harry Mathews and Jacques Roubaud. The two assembled the unfinished mystery and, through notes, provide a fascinating view into the author's mind as he fashioned his literary labyrinth of mirror-stories.

Review Quotes

"The novel's very incompletion allows the reader, who will be equally fascinated by the finished chapers and the jottings, the notes, to understand something of how Geroge Perec--with his intuitions, imagination, memories, and culture--put together a novel."--La Vie des Livres