Publisher's Synopsis
Fittingly for such an enigmatic writer, 'Portrait of a Man' is both Perec's first novel and his last. Written in the late 1950s, it was rejected by all publishers, and buried in a drawer. Perec himself told a friend 'it will either become a masterwork or will wait in my grave for a faithful exegete to find it in an old trunk ...' At last uncovered by his translator and biographer David Bellos, this is almost certainly Perec's final work to appear in English. Establishing themes that would resonate throughout his writing, Perec tells the story of a forger and killer, in an apt coda to one of the brightest literary careers of the twentieth century.
