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book cover of 

W. or the Memory of Childhood 

by

Georges PerecW. or the Memory of Childhood (1975)
A novel by Georges Perec

 
From the author of Life: A User's Manual (Godine, 1987) comes an equally astonishing novel: W or The Memory of Childhood, a narrative that reflects a great writer's effort to come to terms with his childhood and his part in the Nazi occupation of France.

Guaranteed to send shock waves through the literary community, Perec's W tells two parallel stories. The first is autobiographical, describing the author's wartime boyhood. The second tale, denser, more disturbing, more horrifying, is the allegorical story of W, a mythical island off Tierra del Fuego governed by the thrall of the Olympic "ideal," where losers are tortured and winners held in temporary idolatry.

As the reader soon discovers, W is a place where "it is more important to be lucky than to be deserving," and "you have to fight to live...[with] no recourse, no mercy, no salvation, not even any hope that time will sort things out." Here, sport is glorified and victors honored, but athletes are vilified, losers executed, rape common, stealing encouraged and violence a fact of life.

Perec's interpretive vision of the Holocaust forces us to ask the question central to our time: How did this happen before our eyes? How did we look at those "shells of skin and bone, ashen faced, with their backs permanently bent, their eyes full of panic and their suppurating sores"? How did this happen, not on W, but before millions of spectators, some horrified, some cheering, some indifferent, but all present at the games watching the events of that grisly arena?

This book, a devastating indictment of passivity and the psychology of crowds, will find its place beside such great works as Milan Kundera's The Book of Laughter and Forgetting and Primo Levi's The Periodic Table and If Not Now, When?

 
Used availability for Georges Perec's W. or the Memory of Childhood


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Hardback Editions

November 1988 : Hardback
Cover of ISBN: 0879237562Title: W or the Memory of Childhood
Author(s): Georges Perec
ISBN: 0-87923-756-2 / 978-0-87923-756-1 (USA edition)
Publisher: David R Godine Pub
Availability: Amazon   Amazon UK   Amazon CA   
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October 1988 : Hardback
Title: W. or the Memory of Childhood
Author(s): Georges Perec
ISBN: 0-00-271116-8 / 978-0-00-271116-6 (UK edition)
Publisher: The Harvill Press
Availability: Amazon   Amazon UK   
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1975 : Hardback
Title: W OR THE MEMORY OF CHILDHOOD
Author(s): Georges Perec
Publisher: David R Godine
Availability: Amazon   
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Paperback Editions

March 2011 : Paperback
Cover of ISBN: 0099552353Title: W or the Memory of a Childhood. Georges Perec (Vintage Classics)
Author(s): Georges Perec
ISBN: 0-09-955235-3 / 978-0-09-955235-2 (UK edition)
Publisher: Vintage Classic
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July 2010 : Paperback
Cover of ISBN: 1567921582Title: W, or the Memory of Childhood (Verba Mundi)
Author(s): Georges Perec
ISBN: 1-56792-158-2 / 9781567921588 (USA edition)
Publisher: David R Godine
Availability: Amazon   Amazon UK   Amazon CA   
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January 2003 : Paperback
Title: W, or the Memory of Childhood
Author(s): Georges Perec
Publisher: David R. Godine
Availability: Amazon   
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January 1996 : Paperback
Title: W or the Memory of a Childhood
Author(s): Georges Perec
Publisher: Harvill
Availability: Amazon UK   
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November 1989 : Paperback
Cover of ISBN: 0002720388Title: W Or The Memory Of Childhood
Author(s): Georges Perec
ISBN: 0-00-272038-8 / 978-0-00-272038-0 (UK edition)
Publisher: Harvill Press
Availability: Amazon   Amazon UK   
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November 1989 : Paperback
Cover of ISBN: 1860461662Title: W. or the Memory of Childhood
Author(s): Georges Perec
ISBN: 1-86046-166-2 / 9781860461668 (UK edition)
Publisher: The Harvill Press
Availability: Amazon   Amazon UK   
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