The posthumously published first novel from the acclaimed French author of Life: A User's Manual offers "glimpses of Perec's future greatness" ( The New Yorker).Puckish and playful, Georges Perec infused avant-garde and experimental fiction with a wit and wonder that belied the serious concerns and concepts that underpinned it. A prominent member of the OuLiPo, and an abiding influence on fiction writers today, Perec used formal constraints to dazz...

Aboard a cargo ship on a hazardous voyage, ominous prophecies cause troubling misapprehensions, disputes, paranoia, and ultimately tragedy.Émile Lannec thinks it’s madness for his wife, Mathilde, to join him on the maiden voyage of his freighter, the Tonnerre-de-Dieu. She had insisted on coming, probably at the behest of her mother, Madame Pitard, who cosigned the loan to buy the ship. Predictably, Mathilde is appalled by the rough-and-ready conditions bel...

The Great Wall—the most imposing manifestation of Chinese frontier history—crosses a vast territory subject to political, environmental and climatic instabilities that the volume approaches as mutually conditioning, focusing on the Ordos region. This has been a central point of contact between sedentary East Asian and nomadic Inner Asian peoples throughout Chinese premodern history (500 BCE-1800). The contributors emphasize the significance of human-natural interaction affecting environmen...

In this first installment in Georges Simenon’s legendary Inspector Maigret series, M. Maigret hunts down an elusive and notorious confidence man, but finds that identifying him is a game of doubles, intrigue, and hidden crimes.When Detective Chief Inspector Maigret receives notice from Interpol that Pietr the Latvian, an infamous con man, is on his way to Paris, he rushes to intercept him at the train station. But when he arrives he is confounded to find two men wh...

The renowned French author's modern masterpiece: "one of the great novels of the century . . . on the level of Joyce, Proust, Mann, Kafka, and Nabokov" ( Boston Globe).Structured around a single moment in time—8:00 p.m. on June 23, 1975—Georges Perec's "elaborate jigsaw puzzle of a novel" begins in an apartment block in Paris where, chapter by chapter, room by room, a rich cast of characters is revealed in a series of tales that are bizarre, unlikely, movin...

A new translation by David Bellos of the last great novel by France’s greatest novelistIn the turmoil of the French Revolution, the year 1793 represented the peak of bloody revolutionary violence. Victor Hugo plunges into this tumultuous period with a story of courage and betrayal across the political classes. As the revolution rages, three characters – a nobleman turned revolutionary, a devoted mother, and a zealous commander – find their fates intertwined in a st...

'I remember hula hoops.''I remember Hermes handbags, with their tiny padlocks.''I remember that Stendhal liked spinach.''I remember that I dreamed of one day having all 57 varieties of Heinz.'Both an affectionate portrait of mid-century Paris and a daring memoir, Georges Perec's I Remember is now available for the first time in English, with an introduction by David Bellos.In 480 numbered statements, all beginning identically with 'I remember',...

A long-suffering employee in a big corporation has summoned up the courage to ask for a raise. But as he runs through the looming encounter in his mind, his neuroses come to the surface: What is the best day to see the boss? What if he doesn't offer you a seat when you go into his office?The Art of Asking Your Boss for a Raise is a hilarious account of an employee losing his identity-and possibly his sanity-as he tries to put on the most acceptable face for the corporate w...

**A New Yorker Best Book of 2024A New York Times Book Review Editors' Choice"Lively, opinionated, and ultra-timely." —Louis Menand, The New YorkerA fascinating and original history of an idea that now controls and monetizes almost everything we do.**Copyright is everywhere. Your smartphone incorporates thousands of items of intellectual property. Someone owns the reproduction rights to photographs of your dining table. At this very ...

Idiocy is all around us, whether it's the uncle spouting conspiracy theories, the colleagues who repeat your point but louder, or the commuters who still don't know how to use an escalator. But what is the answer to this perpetual scourge?Here, philosopher Maxime Rovere turns his attention to the murkiest of intellectual corners. With warmth, wit and wisdom, he illuminates a new understanding of idiots, one which examines our relations to others and our own ego, of...

This "impeccably researched and pithily written" volume reveals the dramatic life of Victor Hugo's literary masterpiece ( The New York Times ).Les Misérables is among the most popular and enduring novels ever written. Like Inspector Javert's dogged pursuit of Jean Valjean, its appeal has never waned since its first publication in 1862. Whether we encounter Victor Hugo's story on the page, onstage, or on-screen,

"An award-winning translator describes and defends his profession. . . . Ultimately illuminating, even transformative." — Kirkus Reviews"Dazzingly inventive." — New York Times Book Review , A Notable Book of the Year"A richly original cultural history." — The Economist , A Book ...