Georges Perec

Marcelline Block (Princeton University)

Ed. by David Houston Jones, University of Exeter
The Literary Encyclopedia. Volume 1.5.2.07: French Writing and Culture: Postwar and Contemporary, 1945-present.
Vol. editors: Kate Averis (University of Western Australia), Hugo Azerad (University of Cambridge), Patrick ffrench (King's College London), Edward Forman (University of Bristol), Akane Kawakami (Birkbeck, University of London), Siobhán McIlvanney (King's College London), Sinan Richards (King's College London), Tim Unwin (University of Bristol), David Williams (University of Sheffield)

Dates

Born 7 Mar 1936
Died 3 Mar 1982
Activity 1965-1981

Places

Born in France
Active in France

Cultural Identities

Jewish European

Activities

Primary

Essayist
Film Director
Novelist

Resources

Perec's Works

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Georges Perec was born in Paris in 1936 to Icek “André” Judko Peretz, a Jewish immigrant from Poland, who enlisted in the French Army at the beginning of World War I, and was wounded in combat in 1940—he bled to death because there was insufficient medical personnel to attend to all the emergencies. Georges Perec’s mother, Cyrla “Cécile” (née Szulewicz), born in a small Polish

shtetl

, emigrated to Paris as a young girl with her whole family, settling in the impoverished section of the 20th arrondissement in the north of the city known as Belleville. After Cécile became a widow, she refused to leave the Nazi-occupied capital, which was very dangerous for Jews. According to Perec, in her naïveté Cécile believed she would be protected by the French government due to her…

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2250 words

Citation: Block, Marcelline. "Georges Perec". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 23 March 2011 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/speople.php?rec=true&UID=11946, accessed 21 November 2024.]

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