9th Passa Porta Noble Prize 2026: Georges Perec

On the eve of the (eagerly awaited!) announcement of the next Nobel Prize in Literature, Passa Porta will award its ninth Noble Prize. This symbolic distinction recognizes a writer who failed to receive a Nobel Prize in Literature during their lifetime, but who would have deserved one. This time, we have chosen to honour Georges Perec (1936–1982). La Disparition (A Void), La Vie mode d’emploi (Life: A User’s Manual), Tentative d’épuisement d’un lieu parisien (An Attempt at Exhausting a Place in Paris), Espèces d’espaces (Species of Spaces), Lieux (not translated), W ou le souvenir d’enfance (W, or the Memory of Childhood), Un homme qui dort (A Man Asleep), Récits d’Ellis Island (Ellis Island and the People of America), Penser/Classer (Thoughts of Sort), etc. Which is Perec’s finest work? What is his legacy for contemporary writers? How should his work be translated? In the afternoon of 7 October, Perec enthusiasts will gather at the Bookshop for a reading marathon during which they will read out their favourite excerpt from Perec’s work (in the language of their choice); writing prompts with specific constraints will also be handed out. In the evening, the ceremony will welcome authors who admire Perec’s work and those who knew him well. They will all come to talk about ‘their’ Georges Perec. Images will also be screened. Speakers at this exceptional evening will include: Thomas Clerc (French novelist), Lydia Flem (Belgian author and psychoanalyst), Bob Vanden Broeck (Belgian poet), Rokus Hofstede (Perec’s Dutch translator), Sylvia Richardson (Perec’s niece and goddaughter), Philippe Marczewski (Belgian writer), etc. Presented by: Piet Joostens and Ysaline Parisis (Passa Porta) About the author Georges Perec was born in Paris on 7 March 1936. His parents were Polish Jews who had emigrated to France. He was orphaned at a very young age: his father was killed at the front in June 1940; his mother, who was deported to Auschwitz in 1943, never returned. Perec was adopted by his uncle and aunt, and grew up in Paris. After completing his military service and spending more than a year in Tunisia, he began writing short pieces for LaNouvelle Revue française and Les Lettres nouvelles while working as an archivist in a medical research laboratory. In 1965 he published Les Choses (Things: A Story of the Sixties), which was a great success and won the Prix Renaudot. Two years later, Perec was co-opted by Raymond Queneau and François le Lionnais into Oulipo (Ouvroir de littérature potentielle). He would become one of the movement’s most prolific figures. Perec consistently drew inspiration from the most diverse sources, writing across all literary genres, from poetry to autobiography, essays to the novel. Titles include: Un homme qui dort (A Man Asleep), Je me souviens (I Remember), La Disparition (A Void, a lipogrammatic novel written without the letter ‘e’), Les Revenentes (The Exeter Text, in which the only vowel used is ‘e’), La Vie mode d’emploi (Life: A User’s Manual, which won the Prix Médicis in 1978), Un cabinet d’amateur (A Gallery Portrait) and 53 Jours (53 Days, an unfinished text). In 1974 he adapted for the big screen and directed Un homme qui dort (The Man Who Sleeps) with Bernard Queysanne (winner of the Prix Jean Vigo). He divided his time between Paris and Normandy (the Moulin d’Andé). From 1976 onwards, he composed the ‘Mots croisés’ crossword for the weekly magazine Le Point. Georges Perec died on 3 March 1982 at the Charles-Foix Hospital in Ivry-sur-Seine following a battle with lung cancer. A few months earlier, while still unaware of his illness, he had drawn up a list of ‘things one shouldn’t forget to do before dying’. Two previously unpublished works by Perec are due to be released in September by Éditions du Seuil: Dialogue avec les peintres and Dessins, encres et gouaches. Previous winners The idea for the Passa Porta Noble Prize took shape in 2006, when the Maison des Littératures, on the initiative of poet and translator Bart Vonck, organized its first multilingual reading marathon centred on the work of Jorge Luis Borges. That year, Maria Kodama, the widow of the Argentine master, received the first Passa Porta Noble Prize on his behalf in Brussels. The following years, the prize was awarded to Franz Kafka (2008), Hugo Claus (2009), Louis Paul Boon (2012), Pier Paolo Pasolini (2016), Marguerite Yourcenar (2017), Virginia Woolf (2019) and Octavia E. Butler (2024).