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.
This article contains information about the literary events and publications of 1975.
Gadsby is a 1939 novel by Ernest Vincent Wright which does not include any 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.
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 an English-born translator and biographer. Bellos is Meredith Howland Pyne Professor of French Literature and Professor of Comparative Literature at Princeton University in the United States. He was director of Princeton's Program in Translation and Intercultural Communication from its inception in 2007 until July 1, 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.
"The Peasant Marey", written in 1876, is both the "best-known autobiographical account" from the Writer's Diary of Fyodor Dostoevsky, and a frequently anthologized work of fiction. This "double encoding" arises from its framing as both short story, narrated by the fictional prisoner Goryanchikov from The House of the Dead, and as reminiscences of Dostoevsky himself, as a way to evade censorship.
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.
Servitude et grandeur militaires is a book in three parts by Alfred de Vigny, published in 1835. Difficult to categorize, it is not a novel but a short story collection, sometimes loosely based on episodes within Vigny’s own experience. It is also a threefold meditation on the nature of military life: with diminishing enthusiasm Vigny had been an Army officer from 1814 to 1827.
The theory of narrative identity postulates that individuals form an identity by integrating their life experiences into an internalized, evolving story of the self that provides the individual with a sense of unity and purpose in life. This life narrative integrates one's reconstructed past, perceived present, and imagined future. Furthermore, this narrative is a story – it has characters, episodes, imagery, a setting, plots, and themes and often follows the traditional model of a story, having a beginning, middle, and an end (denouement). Narrative identity is the focus of interdisciplinary research, with deep roots in psychology.
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.
