Georges Perec

Things is a 1965 novel by Georges Perec, his first. The novel met with popular and critical success and won the Prix Renaudot in 1965.

In this ingenious book Perec creates an entire microcosm in a Paris apartment block. Serge Valene wants to make an elaborate painting of the building he has made his home for the last sixty years. As he plans his picture, he contemplates the lives of all the people he has ever known there. Chapter by chapter, the …