Research Catalog

W, or, The memory of childhood / Georges Perec ; translated by David Bellos.

Title
W, or, The memory of childhood / Georges Perec ; translated by David Bellos.
Author
Perec, Georges, 1936-1982
Publication
Boston : David R. Godine, 2003.

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Details

Additional Authors
Bellos, David
Description
164 p.; 21 cm.
Summary
"Guaranteed to send shock waves through the literary community, Perec's W tells two parallel stories. The first is autobiographical, describing the author's wartime boyhood. The second tale, denser, more disturbing, more horrifying, is the allegorical story of W, a mythical island off Tierra del Fuego, governed by the thrall of the Olympic "ideal," where losers are tortured and winners held in temporary idolatry." "As the reader soon discovers, W is a place where "it is more important to be lucky than to be deserving," and "you have to fight to live ... [with] no recourse, no mercy, no salvation, not even any hope that time will sort things out." Here, sport is glorified and victors honored, but athletes are vilified, losers executed, stealing encouraged, rape common, and violence a fact of life." "Perec's interpretive vision of the Holocaust forces us to ask the question central to our time: How did this happen before our eyes? How did we look at those "shells of skin and bone, ashen faced, with their backs permanently bent, their eyes full of panic and their suppurating sores?" How did all of this happen, not on W, but before millions of spectators, some horrified, some cheering, some in-different, but all present at the games watching the events of that grisly arena?"--BOOK JACKET.
Series Statement
Verba Mundi ; 2
Uniform Title
  • W, ou, Le souvenir d'enfance. English
  • Verba Mundi 2.
Alternative Title
  • W, ou, Le souvenir d'enfance.
  • W
  • Memory of childhood
Subject
  • Children > Europe > Fiction
  • Autobiographical memory > Fiction
  • Europe > Social conditions > Fiction
Genre/Form
Fiction
Processing Action (note)
  • committed to retain
ISBN
1567921582
OCLC
  • 53009823
  • SCSB-12913138
Owning Institutions
Harvard Library