Life: A User's Manual (original title La Vie mode d'emploi) is Georges Perec's most famous novel, published in 1978, first translated into English by David Bellos in 1987.

Some critics have cited the work as an example of postmodern fiction, but Perec preferred to avoid labels and his only long-term affiliation with any movement was with the Oulipo or OUvroir de LIttérature POtentielle.

Between World War I and II, a tremendously wealthy Englishman, Bartlebooth (whose name combines two literary characters, Herman Melville's Bartleby and Valery Larbaud's Barnabooth), devises a plan that will both occupy the remainder of his life and spend his entire fortune.

First, he spends 10 years learning to paint watercolors under the tutelage of Valène, an artist who is a resident of 11 rue Simon-Crubellier, where Bartlebooth also purchases an apartment.

Bartlebooth then sends each painting back to France, where the paper is glued to a support board, and a carefully selected craftsman named Gaspard Winckler (also a resident of 11 rue Simon-Crubellier) cuts it into a jigsaw puzzle.

Each finished puzzle is treated to re-bind the paper with a special solution invented by Georges Morellet, another resident of 11 rue Simon-Crubellier.

Bartlebooth is forced to change his plans and have the watercolors burned in a furnace locally instead of couriered back to the sea, for fear of those involved in the task betraying him.

Nonetheless, the constraint system creates hundreds of separate stories concerning the inhabitants of the block, past and present, and the other people in their lives.

One of Perec's long-standing projects was the description of a Parisian apartment block as it could be seen if the entire facade were removed, exposing every room.

[2] It is important to note that Perec acknowledged the lists were often mere prompts; certain chapters include far fewer than 42 of their prescribed elements.

An appendix section in the book contains a chronology of events starting at 1833, a 70-page index, a list of the 100 or so main stories, and a plan of the elevation of the block as the 10x10 grid.

It has taken a while for us to catch on, but now that his major work – Life: A User's Manual (1978) – has at last been translated into English it will be impossible for us to think of contemporary French writing in the same way again.