David Bellos is Professor of French and Comparative Literature at Princeton University. He is the author of biographies of Georges Perec (1993) and Jacques Tati (1999) and is currently writing a monograph on Romain Gary. As a translator he is best known for introducing Perec to English readers (Life A User's Manual, 1987; W or The Memory of Childhood, 1988; Things, 1990; and 53 Days, 1992, released in the US in 2002). He has also translated several novels by Ismail Kadare, for which he won the Man Booker International Translator's Award in 2005.