Perec was a renowned literary experimentalist, famous for his novel A Void which is written without recourse to the letter ‘e’. Using this kind of constraint can make books turn out extremely strangely but in W even the more sceptical reader might start to see the point of such experiments.


Unlike much of his work, which has a light-hearted, irreal tone, almost an extended joke by a very literate man, W is an exploration of very real and serious material.


It is an especially bold venture because Perec juggles and teases the bare facts and private memories of his own childhood to form a sort of autobiography that ends up as tremendously original and valid. His material is drawn from a tragic childhood; he was the son of Polish Jews in Nazi-occupied France; first his father died in the fighting during the Nazi invasion and then his mother was rounded up by French gendarmes and shipped off to a German death camp.


The boldness is in applying his extreme scepticism and creativity as a (distanced and aloof) writer to the facts of his own life and background. In the course of telling his story he disputes with and refutes his own memories; of school, of the farm where he found refuge, of relatives. The memories he has to interrogate are of course very sad ones; he shows great courage in examining in the light of mature reflection the roots of his own self.


The halting, fragmentary approach to autobiography in W is profoundly educational and will stimulate the reader in their own reconstruction of that essential part of their lives shrouded in the distant personal past.


What increases the impact of W is that interleaved with the ‘childhood memory’ is another seemingly unconnected story; a Utopian fantasy of a society based around sporting competition, a society in fact that take the idea of sport as a way of life and a moral project in itself to absurd and ghastly limits. It is a rather good satire of both Communist and Fascist authoritarianism as well as the darker aspects of the kind of bureaucratic carrot-and-stick democracy of ‘The West’.


The moment where the two stories connect is shocking and brilliant. While one story is the personal testament of suffering the other is an acute analysis of the cultural and political roots of that suffering. This is a book written in the writer’s own blood, and can only be admired and respected (and enjoyed).

‘As for me, I would have liked to help my mother clear the dinner from the kitchen table. There would have been a blue, small-checked oilcloth on the table, and above it, a counterpoise lamp with a shade shaped almost like a plate, made of white porcelain or enamelled tin, and a pulley system with pear-shaped weights. Then I’d have fetched my satchel, got out my book and my writing pad and my wooden pencil-box. I’d have put them on the table and done my homework. That’s what happened in the books I read at school.’ p70 (from the autobiography strand)

‘But even the most senior Athletes, even the doddery veterans who clown on the track in between races and are fed rotten vegetable stalks by the hilarious crowd, even they still believe that there is something else, that the sky can be bluer, the soup better, the Law less harsh; they believe that merit will be rewarded, that victory will smile on them, and be wonderful.’ p140 (from the sport Utopia strand)

Perec was a renowned literary experimentalist, famous for his novel A Void which is written without recourse to the letter ’e’. Using this kind of constraint can make books turn out extremely strangely but in W even the more sceptical reader might start to see the point of such experiments.

Unlike much of his work, which has a light-hearted, irreal tone, almost an extended joke by a very literate man, W is an exploration of very real and serious material.

It is an especially bold venture because Perec juggles and teases the bare facts and private memories of his own childhood to form a sort of autobiography that ends up as tremendously original and valid. His material is drawn from a tragic childhood; he was the son of Polish Jews in Nazi-occupied France; first his father died in the fighting during the Nazi invasion and then his mother was rounded up by French gendarmes and shipped off to a German death camp.

The boldness is in applying his extreme scepticism and creativity as a (distanced and aloof) writer to the facts of his own life and background. In the course of telling his story he disputes with and refutes his own memories; of school, of the farm where he found refuge, of relatives. The memories he has to interrogate are of course very sad ones; he shows great courage in examining in the light of mature reflection the roots of his own self.

The halting, fragmentary approach to autobiography in W is profoundly educational and will stimulate the reader in their own reconstruction of that essential part of their lives shrouded in the distant personal past.

What increases the impact of W is that interleaved with the ’childhood memory’ is another seemingly unconnected story; a Utopian fantasy of a society based around sporting competition, a society in fact that take the idea of sport as a way of life and a moral project in itself to absurd and ghastly limits. It is a rather good satire of both Communist and Fascist authoritarianism as well as the darker aspects of the kind of bureaucratic carrot-and-stick democracy of ’The West’.

The moment where the two stories connect is shocking and brilliant. While one story is the personal testament of suffering the other is an acute analysis of the cultural and political roots of that suffering. This is a book written in the writer’s own blood, and can only be admired and respected (and enjoyed).

’As for me, I would have liked to help my mother clear the dinner from the kitchen table. There would have been a blue, small-checked oilcloth on the table, and above it, a counterpoise lamp with a shade shaped almost like a plate, made of white porcelain or enamelled tin, and a pulley system with pear-shaped weights. Then I’d have fetched my satchel, got out my book and my writing pad and my wooden pencil-box. I’d have put them on the table and done my homework. That’s what happened in the books I read at school.’ p70 (from the autobiography strand)

’But even the most senior Athletes, even the doddery veterans who clown on the track in between races and are fed rotten vegetable stalks by the hilarious crowd, even they still believe that there is something else, that the sky can be bluer, the soup better, the Law less harsh; they believe that merit will be rewarded, that victory will smile on them, and be wonderful.’ p140 (from the sport Utopia strand)