'Perec is serious fun' The Guardian Both an affectionate portrait of mid-century Paris and a daring memoir, Georges Perec's I Remember is now available in English to UK readers for the first time, with an introduction by David Bellos. In 480 numbered statements, all beginning identically with 'I remember', Perec records a stream of individual memories of a childhood in post-war France, while posing wider questions about memory and nostalgia. As playful and puzzling as the best of his novels, I Remember is an ode to life: the ordinary, the extraordinary, and the sometimes trivial, as seen through the eyes of the irreplaceable Georges Perec.
Darkly funny account of the office worker’s mindset by the celebrated French novelist A long-suffering employee in a big corporation has summoned up the courage to ask for a raise. But as he runs through the looming encounter in his mind, his neuroses come to the surface: What is the best day to see the boss? What if he doesn’t offer you a seat when you go into his office? The Art of Asking Your Boss for a Raise is a hilarious account of an employee losing his identity—and possibly his sanity—as he tries to put on the most acceptable face for the corporate world,with its rigid hierarchies and hostility to new ideas. If he follows a certain course of action, so this logic goes, he will succeed—but, in accepting these conditions, are his attempts to challenge his world of work doomed from the outset? Neurotic and pessimistic, yet endearing, comic and never less than entertaining, Perec’s Woody Allen-esque underling presents an acute and penetrating vision of the world of office work, as pertinent today as it was when it was written in 1968.
Gadsby is a novel by Ernest Vincent Wright. A fading fictitious city known as Branton Hills is rejuvenated due to the efforts of central character John Gadsby and a youth organizer. A humorous read!
A portrait of French society in the first half of the century. The protagonists are the family of a man who made a fortune from wireless radio and the novel follows their intrigues, which are of great interest to their employees.
