W, or the Memory of Childhood 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 c