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In 1979, Georges Perec (1936–1982) wrote a brief entertainment called “The Winter Journey” for a publisher’s catalogue. It quickly became his most frequently reprinted short story. Set on the eve of World War II, it recounts the discovery of a great literary masterpiece that conceals a scandalous secret at the heart of the whole of modern French literature. Every aspect of literary history will have to be rewritten. However, the War intervenes, and the work is lost forever. The present volume, a kind of “hyper-novel,” includes and then extends this brief parable, which turns out to be so resonant with possibilities. Georges Perec was perhaps the most celebrated member of the Oulipo group of writers in France, and over the years members of the group have written 20 sequels to this tale, between 1992 and January of this year. The result is a novel of digressions, gradual elaboration and bizarre forays into the totally unexpected. Winter Journeys has become one of the most extended and congenial literary experiments of recent times; it includes meditations on the literary tastes of worms, book-burning in the Nazi period, the delights of plagiarism and the twisted rationality of bibliophilia. First published as a limited paperback edition in 2001, this new volume is twice the length of its predecessor. Please note that pages 136-140 are intentionally printed upside down, as part of the narrative on those pages (François Caradec's "The Worm's Journey," which describes a bookworm's path through a book).

461 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1979

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About the author

Georges Perec

131 books1,649 followers
Georges Perec was a highly-regarded French novelist, filmmaker, and essayist. He was a member of the Oulipo group. Many of his novels and essays abound with experimental wordplay, lists, and attempts at classification, and they are usually tinged with melancholy.

Born in a working-class district of Paris, Perec was the only son of Icek Judko and Cyrla (Schulewicz) Peretz, Polish Jews who had emigrated to France in the 1920s. He was a distant relative of the Yiddish writer Isaac Leib Peretz.

Perec's first novel, Les Choses (Things: A Story of the Sixties) was awarded the Prix Renaudot in 1965.

In 1978, Perec won the prix Médicis for Life: A User's Manual (French title, La Vie mode d'emploi), possibly his best-known work. The 99 chapters of this 600 page piece move like a knight's tour of a chessboard around the room plan of a Paris apartment building, describing the rooms and stairwell and telling the stories of the inhabitants.

Cantatrix Sopranica L. is a spoof scientific paper detailing experiments on the "yelling reaction" provoked in sopranos by pelting them with rotten tomatoes. All the references in the paper are multi-lingual puns and jokes, e.g. "(Karybb et Scyla, 1973)".

Perec is also noted for his constrained writing: his 300-page novel La disparition (1969) is a lipogram, written without ever using the letter "e". It has been translated into English by Gilbert Adair under the title A Void (1994). The silent disappearance of the letter might be considered a metaphor for the Jewish experience during the Second World War. Since the name 'Georges Perec' is full of 'e's, the disappearance of the letter also ensures the author's own 'disappearance'.

His novella Les revenentes (1972) is a complementary univocalic piece in which the letter "e" is the only vowel used. This constraint affects even the title, which would conventionally be spelt Revenantes. An English translation by Ian Monk was published in 1996 as The Exeter Text: Jewels, Secrets, Sex in the collection Three.

It has been remarked by Jacques Roubaud that these two novels draw words from two disjoint sets of the French language, and that a third novel would be possible, made from the words not used so far (those containing both "e" and a vowel other than "e").

W ou le souvenir d'enfance, (W, or, the Memory of Childhood, 1975) is a semi-autobiographical work which is hard to classify. Two alternating narratives make up the volume: one, a fictional outline of a totalitarian island country called "W", patterned partly on life in a concentration camp; and the second, descriptions of childhood. Both merge towards the end when the common theme of the Holocaust is explained.

Perec was a heavy smoker throughout his life, and was diagnosed with lung cancer in 1981. He died the following year in Ivry-sur-Seine at only forty-five-years old. His ashes are held at the columbarium of the Père Lachaise Cemetery.

David Bellos wrote an extensive biography of Perec: Georges Perec: A Life in Words, which won the Académie Goncourt's bourse for biography in 1994.

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Displaying 1 - 30 of 35 reviews
Profile Image for Glenn Russell.
1,511 reviews13.3k followers
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May 14, 2020



In 1939, visiting a mansion on the outskirts of Le Havre in northern France, the home to parents of one of his colleagues, a young literature instructor by the name of Vincent Degraël happens upon a slim volume in the library - The Winter Journey by Hugo Venier.

The Winter Journey is also the title of this Georges Perec six-pager reminiscent of a tale by Jorge Luis Borges or Italo Calvino.

On the beginning pages of the slender book Degraël located in the mansion's library, the first-person narrator, a young man, briefly recounts his journey to a lake whereupon, along with the ferryman, he steps aboard a flat-bottomed boat so as to cross to a steep-sided small island with a tall, gloomy building in the middle.

No sooner does he set foot in the boat than "a strange-looking couple appeared: an old man and an old woman, both clad in long black capes, who seemed to rise up out of the fog and who came and placed themselves on either side of him."

Upon arrival and entering the island's sole building, all three together continue to climb the wooden staircase to a chamber. Once in the chamber, "as inexplicably as they had appeared, the old people vanished, leaving the young man alone in the middle of the room."

Does this scene of crossing a lake to a small island remind you of a painting? Perhaps Arnold Böcklin's Isle of the Dead?

And the identity of the youth flanked by an old man and old woman who suddenly vanish, leaving him in solitude? Georges Perec's Polish father, a soldier in the French army, fell in battle in 1939 and his Jewish mother was rounded up in 1943 to be taken to Auschwitz and never seen again. Thus, at age seven Georges Perec became an orphan.



The second part of this lean opus contains "a long confession of an exacerbated lyricism, mixed with poems, with enigmatic maxims, with blasphemous incantations."

Vincent Degraël's scholarship focused on French poetry from the Parnassians to the Symbolists. With this in mind, we can imagine Vincent's disbelief as he turned the pages - it is "as if the phrases he had in front of him had become suddenly familiar, were starting irresistibly to remind him of something,". . . as if he were experiencing deja vu.

Ah, yes! Vincent can clearly see Hugo Venier simply lifted his prose and poetry from the likes of Rimbaud, Verlaine, Mallarmé, Nouveau, Lautréamont.

But, but, but . . . the stunning discovery: the publication date for The Winter Journey is 1864. 1864! So, as unbelievable as it might appear, the reverse is, in fact, the case: Rimbaud, Verlaine, Mallarmé, Nouveau, Lautréamont and others stole from Hugo Venier.

Does the entire history of French literature require a rewrite? Vincent Degraël will have to overcome a number of formidable obstacles, including how all 500 copies of The Winter Journey might have been destroyed by the plagiarists themselves.

Reading this short tale, I kept wondering: how many times did Georges Perec have the feeling what he was reading was something he himself wrote? Georges was fond of saying he wanted to write in the spaces between other books. Did he occasionally have the sense other great writers were crowding him out? With his inventive genius for language and word play, I wouldn't be surprised. Also, recognizing Georges wanted to write everything in every way possible, could he wish to write the very works of his favorite authors?

John Sturrock's translation of The Winter Journey is included in Species of Spaces and Other Pieces published by Penguin.
Profile Image for Sweet Jane.
162 reviews259 followers
December 14, 2019
Καλογραμμένο, ουσιώδες, παιχνιδιάρικο και ευκολοδιάβαστο
Profile Image for Argos.
1,260 reviews491 followers
September 20, 2022
Georges Perec ve Oulipo oluşumu hakkında daha önceki Perec kitapları okumalarım sırasında bahsetmiştim. Hayranı olduğum yazarın “Kış Yolculuğu” adlı öyküsü modern Fransız edebiyatının unutulmuş bir başyapıtının keşfini anlatmaktadır. Öyleki 19. yüzyılın önde gelen şairlerinin neredeyse tümününün “önceden intihal” yaptıklarını ileri sürer öyküsünde. Kitap kısaca 1939’da genç bir edebiyat öğretmeni olan Vincent Dagrael’in, bir arkadaşının kütüphanesinde tesadüfen gördüğü Hugo Vernier’e ait “Kış Yolculuğu” adlı kitabında okuduklarının tanıdık gelmesi üzerine tedirgin olup işin peşine düşmesiyle başlar. Daha fazla yazarsam spoiler vermiş olurum, burada bırakıyorum.

G. Perec olağanüstü bir anlatımla (elimdeki kitapta sadece 8 sayfa tutuyor) çok büyük bir oranda kurmaca olan öyküsünü tamamlar. Neden tamamiyle kurmaca demiyorum ? Bugün Oulipo’cular bile %100 kurmaca diyemiyorlar, çünkü yazarı G. Perec ! “Kuş Yolculuğu ve Peşindeki Öyküler” işte bu nedenle Perec’in arkadaşı J. Roubaud’un hikayenin arka planını aydınlatmak, gerçek mi, kurmaca mı olduğunu aydınlatmak amacıyla bir hareket başlatır, “Kuş Yolculuğu” adlı bir öykü yazar, onu diğer Oulipocular takip eder.

1979’daki ilk öyküden sonra 2013’de yazılan son öykü (toplam 20 yeni öykü ve bir sonsöz) ile bu yeni kitap, ya da yazarların dediği gibi hiper-roman bitmiş olur. Her bir öykü bir öncekini izler, yani her eklenen öykü en azından kendinden öncekini okumuş biri tarafından yazılır. Muhtemelen öncekilerin de okunmuş olduğunu görebiliyoruz. Sadece bir öykü Kuş Yolculuğu’na karşı yazılmış olup (Dilbaz Yolculuk) romanın bütünlüğünü bozmamaktadır. Aralarında keyif vermeyen üç öykünün olduğunu da sizleri etkilememek için isim vermeden belirteyim.

Yazın olanaklarını, edebiyatın matematikle valsini, zekanın kaleme yansımasını çok net gösteren bir kitap. Bu yorumu tamamlarken Notos Dergi’nin 76. sayısında Selahattin Özpalabıyıklar’ın “Atmosfer Yolculuğu” adlı öyküsünü de okuyun (s.57-60), bakalım karar verebilecek misiniz, kurmaca mı, gerçek mi ? George Perec’i tanımak isteyenler sadece “Kış Yolculuğu”nu okusunlar yeter. Perecsever olarak kesinlikle öneririm.
Profile Image for Mikko Saari.
Author 6 books258 followers
January 3, 2023
Kun haastattelen kirjailijoita, kysyn aina lopuksi suosituksia. Ne ovat usein kirjoja ja tätä kautta olen tutustunut jo useampaan kiinnostavaan teokseen. Viimeksi runoilija Riikka Simpura suositteli vuodenaikaan sopivasti Georges Perecin Talvinen matka -teosta, kehuen sitä ”hykerryttävän nerokkaaksi”.

Tämä Poesiavihkoissa julkaistu teos on hyvin pieni: kyseessä on pienessä vihkomuodossa vain yhdeksänsivuisesta novellista, joka kertoo nuoresta kirjallisuudenopettajasta Vincent Degraëlista. Hän löytää vuonna 1939 eräästä yksityisestä kirjastosta kiehtovan teoksen, nimeltään niin ikään Talvinen matka ja alkaa lukea sitä. Teos tuntuu ensin plagioivan useimpia merkittäviä ranskalaisrunoilijoita, kunnes Degraël oivaltaa, että Talvinen matka onkin julkaistu vuosikymmeniä ennen näitä mestariteoksia. Tämän kirjallisen sensaation selvitteleminen osoittautuu kuitenkin hyvin vaikeaksi.

Se jutun juonesta, lukekaa loput itse – novelli on todellakin varsin lyhyt, mutta hyvin oivaltava. Tästä vihkojulkaisusta huomattavan tekee se, että suomentaja Sami Sjöberg on kirjoittanut novellin jatkoksi jälkisanansa, joilla onkin sitten mittaa suunnilleen tuplasti novellin itsensä verran. Sjöberg sijoittaa Perecin novellin kontekstiinsa osana Oulipo-kirjallisuutta ja kertoo millainen kollektiiviromaani novellin pohjalta on rakentunut. Novellissa on pienestä koostaan huolimatta paljon tasoja, jotka olisivat kiitäneet reippaasti ohi ilman Sjöbergin selityksiä.

Lämmin suositus siis tälle pienelle vihkoselle. Talvinen matka ei kestä kauan, mutta tarjoaa raikkaita näkymiä kokeelliseen kirjallisuuteen. Tämän myötä myös päätökseni tilata Poesiavihkot tälle vuodelle tuntuu entistä paremmalta. Toivottavasti kohdalle osuu tällaisia helmiä!
Profile Image for chris.
125 reviews4 followers
January 20, 2024
Molt curt però molt irònic, m’agrada! Juga amb el lector i amb la possibilitat de la literatura d’obrir portes que mai s’acabaran tancant del tot perquè sempre hi haurà algú que en tindrà la clau!

OuLiPo us estimo des que vaig fer el treball de mates de batxillerat sobre vosaltres, un petonet!
Profile Image for aaron trowbridge.
82 reviews1 follower
December 17, 2025
A tantalizing morselof a story I found in San Francisco and finished on the m train in New York. Snow is still on the concrete here.
Profile Image for Verónica Juárez.
600 reviews40 followers
September 28, 2016
Es increíble cómo un libro de tan poca extensión, pueda contener una historia como esta. Un libro que habla sobre libros siempre va a ser atractivo, aunque no en todas las ocasiones resulte una historia interesante. Este no es, afortunadamente, el caso: una premisa harto interesante, una buena historia y un final que te hace sentir tristeza por los personajes, el investigador y el investigado.

No puedes hacer más que pensar cuántos Hugos Vernier, han existido en toda la literatura, desconocidos y olvidados; por eso mismo es una historia muy triste.
Profile Image for Facundo Melillo.
203 reviews46 followers
October 9, 2024
Decir que es borgeano es quedarse corto. Me fascinó. Me declaro desde ya fan de Perec y este recién fue mi primer acercamiento a su literatura.
Profile Image for Quiver.
1,134 reviews1,354 followers
November 20, 2017
A distinctly Borgesian story: in size (short), in the amount of detail (copious), in quality and idea (subversive of reality, yet tethered to it).

Vincent Degraël had scarcely begun to read it before he felt an uncanny sensation he could not precisely define, but which only grew as he turned the pages with an ever unsteadier hand: it was as if the sentences before his eyes were suddenly familiar, started to remind him irresistibly of something, as if on the reading of each one was imposed, or rather superimposed, an acute but uncertain memory of another almost identical sentence that he had read somewhere else; as if these words—sweeter than kisses or more treacherous than poison—these alternately limpid and hermetic, obscene and heartfelt, dazzling, labyrinthine words, swinging incessantly like a demented compass-neeedle between hallucinatory violence and fabulous serenity, were sketching out a confused configuration in which you could find (perhaps) in random array Germain Nouveau and Tristan Corbière, Villiers and Banbille, Rimbaud and Verhaeren, Charles Cros and Léon Bloy.


One sentence: the heart, yet to understand its significance you need to read the whole story.

A treat.
Profile Image for Alejandro Orradre.
Author 3 books109 followers
January 2, 2019
Aunque ridículamente corto, este artículo de Georges Perec explora una suerte de metafísica y mundos paralelos en los que habla del legado cultural, de la inspiración literaria y de la gratitud del artista hacia sus referentes.

El viaje de invierno es una pequeña reflexión que sigue siendo tan fresca y moderna como el día que fue escrita.
Profile Image for Mehmet.
71 reviews12 followers
August 2, 2016
Minik bir mücevher veya Fransız edebiyatına bir girizgâh.

Ayrıca kitaplıkta yan yana durması gereken bir başka kitabı anımsatır:

"Bir Kış Gecesi Eğer Bir Yolcu" (Italo Calvino)
Profile Image for Cem.
183 reviews3 followers
August 29, 2022
hayatımda okurken en zevk aldığım 4-5 kitaptan biri olarak kitaplığımda yerini aldı. muazzam. çok büyük keyif. oulipo ekibinden diğer yazarların kitaplarını da inşallah bir ara okuyabiliriz. yayınevi baskıdan önce bir redaksiyon aşamasından falan geçirse iyi olurmuş ama neyse artık. bazen matbaaya yollamadan önce hiç bakmadıklarını falan düşünüyor insan. hem böyle değerli iş yapılıyor, hem de basit mevzular halledilmiyor.
Profile Image for Elisala.
998 reviews9 followers
December 17, 2017
Très courte nouvelle, plutôt sympathique, bien écrite, avec ce que j'identifie comme un humour discret et brutal, mais soyons franche, d'un intérêt limité, trop courte pour y accrocher vraiment ou construire une intrigue digne de ce nom. Un petit passe-temps pour le métro.
Profile Image for Ell.
53 reviews28 followers
July 19, 2017
(2001 edition of the Atlas Anti-Classic)
94 reviews
October 10, 2021
Poche pagine che cambiano tutto perché capaci di instillare un dubbio, che riga dopo riga prende corpo e scena e sembra trasformarsi in certezza.
Profile Image for Ezgi.
Author 11 books19 followers
July 5, 2022
Uzun soluklu ve yorucu bir okumaydı. Oulipocuların hepsini aynı derecede sevmediğim için arada pek hoşlanmadığım hikayeler de çıktı elbette. Ama bu akımın kafa yakan doğasına bir daha hayran kaldım.
Profile Image for 47x.
27 reviews
November 23, 2022
非常薄的小册子。既是一篇关于plagiarism的短篇,同时又出现了「消失」这一主题。一个人尽管天赋异禀,后世无数诗人都从他这里生发,但却完全被时间遗忘。战争(一战、二战)毁掉了他曾经存在过的确切证明,最后留下来的只有研究者长达三百多页的白纸。
Profile Image for Ignacio.
69 reviews3 followers
February 22, 2023
Una historieta muy corta que leí ayer y de la que ya no me acuerdo porque estaba medio dormido, pero estaba bien seguramente.
Profile Image for Dina H..
331 reviews1 follower
June 2, 2023
« La poésie doit être faite par tous et non par un ». 🫶🏼
Profile Image for benjamon.
97 reviews3 followers
December 31, 2024
perec al inicio
perec al final
full circle
buen año
nos vemos en el próximo
259 reviews10 followers
February 6, 2025
part of a collection of perec's. species of spaces and other pieces.

winter journey itself very strong. resembles bolano in its mythologizing of a writer/of writing.
Displaying 1 - 30 of 35 reviews

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