An autobiography, sometimes informally called an autobio, is a self-written biography of one's own life.
Georges Perec was a French novelist, filmmaker, documentalist, and essayist. He was a member of the Oulipo group. His father died as a soldier early in the Second World War and his mother was killed in the Holocaust. Many of his works deal with absence, loss, and identity, often through word play.
Life: A User's Manual is Georges Perec's most famous novel, published in 1978, first translated into English by David Bellos in 1987. Its title page describes it as "novels", in the plural, the reasons for which become apparent on reading. Some critics have cited the work as an example of postmodern fiction, but Perec preferred to avoid labels and his only long-term affiliation with any movement was with the Oulipo or OUvroir de LIttérature POtentielle.
A first-person narrative is a mode of storytelling in which a storyteller recounts events from that storyteller's own personal point of view, using first-person grammar such as "I", "me", "my", and "myself". It must be narrated by a first-person character, such as a protagonist, re-teller, witness, or peripheral character. Alternatively, in a visual storytelling medium, the first-person perspective is a graphical perspective rendered through a character's visual field, so the camera is "seeing" out of a character's eyes.
Gadsby is a 1939 novel by Ernest Vincent Wright, written without words that contain the letter E, the most common letter in English. A work that deliberately avoids certain letters is known as a lipogram. The plot revolves around the dying fictional city of Branton Hills, which is revitalized as a result of the efforts of protagonist John Gadsby and a youth organizer.
Patrick Chamoiseau is a French author from Martinique known for his work in the créolité movement. His work spans a variety of forms and genres, including novels, essays, children's books, screenplays, theatre and comics. His novel Texaco was awarded the Prix Goncourt in 1992.
Harry Mathews was an American writer, the author of various novels, volumes of poetry and short fiction, and essays. Mathews was also a translator of the French language.
David Bellos is a British academic, translator and biographer. He is the Meredith Howland Pyne professor of French and comparative literature at Princeton University in the United States, and was director of its translation and intercultural communication programme from 2007 to 2019.
"Funes the Memorious" is a fantasy short story by Argentine writer Jorge Luis Borges (1899–1986). First published in La Nación of June 1942, it appeared in the 1944 anthology Ficciones, part two (Artifices). The first English translation appeared in 1954 in Avon Modern Writing No. 2.
Jean Patrick Modiano, generally known as Patrick Modiano, is a French novelist and recipient of the 2014 Nobel Prize in Literature. He is a noted writer of autofiction, the blend of autobiography and historical fiction.
Autofiction is, in literary criticism, a form of fictionalized autobiography.
Louis Lambert is an 1832 novel by French novelist and playwright Honoré de Balzac (1799–1850), included in the Études philosophiques section of his novel sequence La Comédie humaine. Set mostly in a school at Vendôme, it examines the life and theories of a boy genius fascinated by the Swedish philosopher Emanuel Swedenborg (1688–1772).
Which Moped with Chrome-plated Handlebars at the Back of the Yard? is a comic novella by Georges Perec. Perec's second published work, it was originally published in 1966 in French as Quel petit vélo à guidon chromé au fond de la cour? The English translation by Ian Monk was published in Three by Perec by David R. Godine, Publisher in 2004. The Review of Contemporary Fiction called Monk's translation "gorgeous and eloquent".
Things: A Story of the Sixties is a 1965 novel by Georges Perec, his first.
Aldo Zargani was an Italian Jewish writer and public intellectual who lived in Rome. He started writing in his early sixties: his first and best-known book, Per violino solo, appeared in 1995. In addition to his autobiographical writing, Zargani contributed to discussions about the politics and culture of Italian Jews with essays, lectures, and school visits.
Souvenirs d'enfance is a series of autobiographical novels by French filmmaker and académicien, Marcel Pagnol (1895–1974). Souvenirs d'enfance comprises four volumes covering the years from his birth in 1895 to about 1910, which were spent in Marseille, with family summer holidays in La Treille, about ten kilometres away. The four volumes in order are La Gloire de mon père ; Le Château de ma mère ; Le Temps des secrets ; and Le Temps des amours. The first two were published in 1957, the third in 1960, and the fourth, which was unfinished, was published posthumously in 1977. The first two were made into films, directed by Yves Robert.
Ru is a novel by Vietnamese-born Canadian novelist Kim Thúy, first published in French in 2009 by Montreal publisher Libre Expression. It was translated into English in 2012 by Sheila Fischman and published by Vintage Canada.
Le Condottière is a posthumous novel by the French writer Georges Perec, originally written between 1957 and 1960, but published in 2012 by the publishing house Seuil, in its collection "Librairie du XXe et du XXIe siècles" directed by Maurice Olender.
Tiphaine Samoyault is a French university lecturer, literary critic, and novelist, specializing in the work of Roland Barthes. She is the niece of harpsichordist Blandine Verlet and writer, academic and psychoanalyst Agnès Verlet. In 2015, she received the Grand Prize in Non-Fiction from the Société des gens de lettres.
The Art and Craft of Approaching Your Head of Department to Submit a Request for a Raise is a book by French writer Georges Perec (1936–1982). In 2011, publishing house Verso Books published a translation into English by David Bellos.
