Celebrated as the man who wrote an entire novel without using the letter 'e', and another in the form of a vast jigsaw puzzle, Georges Perec found humour - and pathos - in the human need for arrangement and classification. The essays in Thoughts of Sorts explore the rules by which we find a place in the world. Is thinking a kind of sorting? Is sorting a kind of thought?

Translated by: David Bellos
Introduction by: Margaret Drabble