Life - A User's Manual

Paperback, 581 pages

Published: 1978

Edition: Vintage Books (2003)

Greatest Books (amalgamated list of best books)

English translation by: David Bellos (1987)

Original title: La Vie mode d’emploi

This marvellous book is one of the most ingenious works of modern fiction, an entire microcosm brought to life in a Paris apartment block. Serge Valene wants to create an elaborate painting of the building he has made his home for the last sixty years. As he plans his picture, he contemplates the lives of all the people he has ever known there. Chapter by chapter, the narrative moves around the building revealing a marvellously diverse cast of characters in a series of ever more unlikely tales, which range from an avenging murderer to an eccentric English millionaire who has devised the ultimate past-time...