It's Georges Perec - author of my very favourite book of all time - so it has to be good, doesn't it? And indeed it is. I'd read about this novel - Perec's second, but never published in his lifetime - in David Bellos' monumental biography of Perec, so when it finally turned up in print I had to hav...
We begin. We turn to the first page, and we find ourselves already placed, not only on location but in the location. We are in one of the public areas. It is not, however, the entrance hall, the first of these areas which would be encountered were we to follow the logic of entering buildings. Then a...
Mr. Perec's "Life: A User's Manual" has no protagonist. Except for, maybe, the building. The 10 story apartment building at 11 Rue Simon-Crubellier, Paris, France. The building and its stairs, elevator, floors, basements, attic, apartments, bedrooms, dining rooms, kitchens, bathrooms, and every fu...
"Pietr the Latvian" introduces the world to Jules Maigret, Detective Chief Inspector of the Police Judiciaire in Paris for the very first time. The setting is a cool, rainy autumn afternoon in interwar Europe a little more than a decade after the end of the First World War. Simenon provides the read...
Penguin recently announced that it will issue new translations of all 75 of Georges Simenon's Maigret books, in original publication order. The project began at the end of 2013 in the UK, and the beginning of 2014 in the US. In addition to these new translations being published in paperbacks with at...
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