Life
A User's Manual
Ranked #7 in Structural, Ranked #45 in French — see more rankings.
Life: A User's Manual is an unclassified masterpiece, a sprawling compendium as encyclopedic as Dante's Commedia and Chaucer's Canterbury Tales and, in its break with tradition, as inspiring as Joyce's Ulysses. Perec's spellbinding puzzle begins in an apartment block in the XVIIth arrondissement of Paris where, chapter by chapter, room by room, like an onion being peeled, an extraordinary rich cast of characters is revealed in a series of tales that are bizarre, unlikely, moving, funny, or (sometimes) quite ordinary. From the confessions of a racing cyclist to the plans of an avenging... more
Reviews and Recommendations
We've comprehensively compiled reviews of Life from the world's leading experts.
David Bellos Some people love it for its cleverness but, behind the cleverness, there is something more, something deeply human. (Source)
Alina Varlanuta I don’t have [a favourite book]. But I do have favourite characters: [....] All inhabitants of the apartment block on 11Rue Simon-Crubellier who lived inside George Perec’s ‘Life. A user’s manual.’. (Source)
Rankings by Category
Life is ranked in the following categories:
- #63 in Abstract
- #70 in France
- #75 in Postmodernism
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