Things/a Man Asleep

Things, Perec's first published novel, made him an instant celebrity in 1965 & was translated into a dozen languages. It was shortly followed by A Man Asleep, & we have combined the two in a single volume, which we offer here for the first time in paperback. These short pieces bear witness to Perec's firmly established status among the past century's most exciting & innovative writers. In Things, Jerome & Sylvie, a prototypical young, upwardly mobile couple, are paralyzed by their desire for a better life. Fleeing Tunis, seduced by the mass of possessions that crowds their life & masquerades as a substitute for order & stability, they instead find a life "sans everything." And Perec, typically, offers them no obvious exit, no solutions for their ambiguous future. The nameless student in A Man Asleep is the direct opposite; he attempts to rid himself entirely of material lust, wishing "to want nothing. Just to wait, until there is nothing left to wait for." ###1-56792-158-2Perec, Georges is the author of 'Things/a Man Asleep', published 2010 under ISBN 9781567921571 and ISBN 1567921574.