Georges Perec, Life A User's Manual (1978)
1978? Well, not really. It's true
that a French novel called La Vie mode d'emploi
was published in that year, but David Belloc's English translation
wasn't released until 1987. On the one hand, collapsing the original
book and its translation into one seems sloppy, but on the other
hand, it seems kind of insufferably pedantic for me to provide all
the publication details. I mean, I would if this were a scholarly
publication, obviously, but on a blog entry that will be read by
maybe a half dozen people? Hmm.