Traumatic Memory and Bodily Inscription in Georges Perec’s W; ou, Le souvenir d’enfance and Philippe Grimbert’s Un secret

Georges Perec’s W; ou, Le souvenir d’enfance (1975) and Philippe Grimbert’s Un secret (2004) are fi rstperson narratives of the Holocaust that place particular emphasis on the body by highlighting various scars, wounds, and physical deformities. Many Holocaust survivors have expressed their “bodily” or psychosomatic memories, such as Charlott e Delbo, in her memoir Auschwitz and Aft er. Here, it is through narrating the body that Delbo recounts her past. She writes,