W ou le souvenir d'enfance
Georges Perec
 In the first part, the fictional narrator is contacted by a mysterious individual, who informs him of the disappearance of a deaf and dumb boy in a shipwreck. The boy is also called Gaspard Winkler—the adult narrator of the story discovers that he took on the boy's identity after deserting the army, although at that time he believed he had been given forged identity papers. In the second part, the fictional narrative (apparently based on a story written by Perec at the age of thirteen) recounts the organisation of an Olympian Island called W, in which life revolves around sport and competition. While the island might at first seem a Utopia, successive chapters reveal the arbitrary and cruel rules that govern the lives of the athletes. The final autobiographical chapter links back to the fictional narrative by a quotation from David Rousset about the Nazi concentration camps, where Perec's mother died: by now the reader has discovered that the story of the island is an allegory of life in the camps.