An Attempt at Exhausting a Place in Paris

By Georges Perec, Marc Lowenthal (translator),

Book cover of An Attempt at Exhausting a Place in Paris

Book description

"Take it with you to any cafe in any city, and Perec will be both your drinking partner and your tour guide, drawing your attention to each little detail coming and going.” –Ian Klaus, CityLab

One overcast weekend in October 1974, Georges Perec set out in quest of the "infraordinary":…

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Why read it?

1 author picked An Attempt at Exhausting a Place in Paris as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?

We are coded as homo sapiens to look at each other. To observe, study, analyse our fellow creatures. One of the reasons I’ll never live in the country is that I’ll miss observing urban life. 

This is such a simple book with a simple premise. Perec recorded everything he saw while sitting at a café on a Parisian square over three days. When I lived in Paris in the 1990s, I had a dog-eared French version of this book and I dutifully went to the same place. Not to record my own observations but to try and see things that…

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