Georges Perec

The BnF dedicates a major exhibition of nearly 300 pieces to the writer Georges Perec (1936-1982), a major figure in 20th-century French literature and an emblematic member of Oulipo. Author notably of Les Choses, La Disparition and La Vie mode d’emploi, translated into numerous languages, Perec remains a seminal writer whose work continues to inspire many creators.

The exhibition at a glance Conceived as an exhibition of “user manuals”, this presentation brings together nearly 300 pieces and invites visitors to discover or get to know a polymorphic body of work better.

Manuscripts, photographs, paintings, drawings and objects preserved at the Bibliothèque nationale de France, at its Arsenal site (Paris 4th arrondissement), thus question the “Perec myth”, while also revealing, mirroring his writings, the man behind the work.

A Life User Manual Georges Perec’s life began dramatically: his father died in 1940 during the first battles of the Second World War, his mother was deported and murdered in Auschwitz in 1943, and he himself spent the Occupation as a “hidden child” in the Vercors.

After a difficult start, literary success came in 1965 with Les Choses, faded a little, then resurfaced in 1978 thanks to the success of La Vie mode d’emploi.

After Perec’s sudden death at 46, his work continued to gain importance and recognition until its entry into the prestigious Bibliothèque de la Pléiade in 2017.

Vowels and an absent one, a journey through Perec’s work and life Playful and interactive, the exhibition’s journey unfolds across six spaces conceived as the vowels of the alphabet.

Through these stages, it reveals a body of work whose discovery also uncovers the man hidden behind the texts.

Notes, manuscripts, typescripts and publications dialogue with photographs, drawings, paintings and objects (a bicycle, a typewriter) to weave a relationship with the visitor where the notion of play, so present in Perec and his Oulipian friends, occupies a central place.

Space A: the first space presents the great diversity of a protean body of work, particularly perceptible in his youthful attempts and early publications, such as Les Choses (Prix Renaudot 1965), and Un homme qui dort, which the writer adapted for cinema in 1974.

Space [E]: a reference to one of his most famous works, La Disparition, in which