"53 Days"

Celebrate Georges Perec with "53 Days," available in paperback for the first time! At the time of his death, Perec was hard at work on this absorbing, allusive, and playful literary thriller. "53 Days," is the ultimate detective story: the narrator, a French colonial teacher, is hot on the trail of famous crime writer Robert Serval, who has mysteriously vanished. Perec lures the reader into a labyrinth of mirror-stories--which are mirrored in turn by Perec's own riddling drafts and notes for the end of "53 Days," reconstructed here by fellow Oulipians Harry Mathews and Jacques Roubaud. "53 Days," is a supremely satisfying, engrossing, and truly original mystery. To read Georges Perec one must be ready to abandon oneself to a spirit of play. His books are studded with intellectual traps, allusions and secret systems, and...they are prodigiously entertaining.--Paul Auster