An intricate puzzle-novel anatomizing a Paris apartment building and its inhabitants, room by room, around one man's lifelong artistic project.
Books mentioned in Life: A User's Manual (10)
The Mysterious Island by Jules Verne: “a chest carved with designs illustrating the principal scenes of The Mysterious Island: the landing of the balloon... the miraculous finding of Cyrus Smith”
In Search of the Castaways by Jules Verne: “connect them magnificently to The Children of Captain Grant and Twenty Thousand Leagues Under The Sea”
Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea by Jules Verne: “connect them magnificently to The Children of Captain Grant and Twenty Thousand Leagues Under The Sea”
Silbermann by Jacques de Lacretelle: “The first book he read was a novel, Silbermann, by Jacques de Lacretelle, which had won the Prix Fémine the previous autumn”
Kubla Khan by Samuel Taylor Coleridge: “a critical edition with facing-page translation of Coleridge's Kubla Khan: In Xanadu did Kubla Khan / A stately pleasure-dome decree”
The Lusiads by Luís de Camões: “not with the help of Camoëns's Lusiades through which Paganel thought he was learning Spanish”
Les Semailles et les Moissons by Henri Troyat: “the first volume of Henri Troyat's serial novel Les Semailles et les Moissons, which had been published a few months earlier in France”
Bibliotheca Lusitana by Diogo Barbosa Machado: “the fourth and last volume of Diego Barbosa-Machado's Bibliotheca Lusitana, which he'd found... on the penny shelf of a Lugano bookshop”
Dictionnaire de Trévoux by Jesuits of Trévoux: “the books... a fine copy of the Dictionnaire de Trévoux in two volumes”
Who's Who in America by Marquis Who's Who: “He found his address in the latest edition of Who's Who in America and wrote to him”