Books like Oulipo compendium by Harry Mathews

Candide: A Tale of Conviviality and Optimism in a Wretched World

Labyrinths is Jorge Luis Borges’ celebrated volume of short stories and essays, containing classics such as “TLON, UQBAR, ORBIS TERTIUS,” “The Library of Babel,” and philosophical parables that explore language, reality, and fiction.

An ancient Greek tale of transformation and magic in the form of a classic novel and translation.

Émile Zola’s 1868 novel *Thérèse Raquin* follows a young woman’s unhappy marriage and her fatal affair with a friend, exploring themes of adultery and murder within 19th‑century French society.

Professor William Frederick Kohler, a Midwestern academic specializing in the Third Reich, finds himself incapable of writing a book introduction and instead drafts a chaotic autobiographical narrative that mirrors his literal tunnel construction beneath his home.

The Oulipo was founded in 1960 by a group of leading French writers and mathematicians, it still meets regularly some thirty five years later, making it one of the longest lived and productive literary groupings ever. The Oulipo's original aim was to inquire into the possibilities of combining literature and mathematics, but this field of study was soon expanded to include all writing using self-imposed restrictive systems. Remarkable Oulipian works have been written by Queneau, Calvino, Perec, Roubaud, Mathews (to mention only those familiar to English-speaking readers). The group publishes a series of small booklets for circulation among its friends. This anthology reproduces six of them in English facsimile, from among the earliest (no. 3, 1976) to the most recent (no. 70, 1995); it provides the English reader with a taste at least of one of the most sustained and intriguing literary investigations of recent years.