Novel by Georges Perec, considered as his masterpiece, as well as the ultimate example of Oulipo.
The novel tells the stories of the people living in an apartment in Paris throughout the years, with the main story moving towards a single moment in time at the end of the novel.
The book is extremely entertaining with its quirky stories, hidden wordplay and puzzles; what the reader does not expect is the fact that the novel is based on a difficult formal procedure.
The structure of the novel was determined by the Knight's Tour problem -- the chapters move around the apartment like a knight on a chessboard and the contents of the chapters were determined by a mathematical process; Perec started by 21 pairs of lists, consisting of 10 items, and distributed these to the apartment using Latin Squares; thus each chapter was written using a "schedule of obligations" of 42 items that must be mentioned in the chapter.