TEHRAN – “A Man Asleep”, a 1967 novel by the French writer Georges Perec, has recently been published in Persian.

Now is the publisher of the book translated into Persian by Nasser Nabavi.

It uses a second-person narrative, and follows a 25-year-old student who embarks upon a disturbing and exhaustive pursuit of indifference, following his experience in non-existence with relentless logic.

The novel was adapted into a 1974 film, “The Man Who Sleeps”.

The novel was published in France through Éditions Denoël in 1967. An English translation by Andrew Leak was published in 1990 through Collins Harvill in the United Kingdom and David R. Godine, Publisher in the United States, in a shared volume with Perec’s first novel, “Things: A Story of the Sixties”, which was awarded the Prix Renaudot in 1965.

Upon the American release, Richard Eder of the Los Angeles Times compared the two novels of the volume, “Things” and “A Man Asleep”, and wrote that “Things” was “the more engaging of the two, though less focused and ultimately, perhaps, less memorable.” 

He wrote that in “A Man Asleep”, “Perec shows a beauty on the far side of the void; a humanity on the far side of refusal.”

Photo: Front cover of the Persian edition of Georges Perec’s novel “A Man Asleep”.

MMS/YAW