W or The Memory of Childhood

A remarkable book about Perec's own early life whose formality is quite hauntingly at odds with its terrible subject

Guardian

Perec was a haunted writer, haunted by his Jewish ancestry, by the Holocaust that coincided with his own orphaned childhood, by the death of his father in 1940 and his mother's disappearance in Auschwitz. Writing, for him, was an act of exorcism

Sunday Times

A strange and complicated book, a work of tremendous, silenced emotion

Observer

The childhood story of 'W' carries Perec's confused conception of the concentration camps...bewilderingly sad

Independent

His brilliant and profound memoir-fantasy deserves to be recognised for what it is: a masterpiece

Guardian

Perec was a polymathic genius, and his early death in 1982 (he was only 45) robbed France of its most dazzling experimental writer, one who tried everything and failed at nothing...He has, deservedly, become a cult in France, particularly with young Parisians, who instinctively (and rightly) identify him as the super-zapper, the biographer of their fragmented consumer culture, of which he was himself the creation.

Glasgow Herald

Perec has a political edge and his books can shift your mental furniture. This is a fine example of a very brave idea that he made work quite brilliantly. as horrifying as Orwell but as ludicrous as Monty Python. What two bizarre flavours to mix into the same dish and not nauseate the reader! It's brilliant. It is a very influential book and it's always in the background of my writing. It's a very fine role model because it says you can make anything work as long as you navigate the pitfalls.

David Mitchell