This novel contains two distinct alternating biographies: the first is an allegorical story of W, a bizarre, mythical island civilization, symbolizing the Holocaust. It is printed in italics. The second text is Perec's memories of his childhood in Paris. Perec writes in his introduction that the two stories "are in fact inextricably bound up with each other, as though neither could exist on its own, as though it was only their coming together, the distant light they cast on each other, that could make apparent what is never quite said in one,never quite said in the other, but said only in their fragile overlapping." -- Source of annotation: Marvin or Ruth Sackner.