Cent mille milliards de poèmes by Raymond Queneau

First printing of the first edition of this remarkable work which marked the beginning of the legendary Oulipo group in 1961, the French literary movement that employed mathematics and chance to produce a new type of literature. This is essentially 10 sonnets, with each line printed on its own strip of paper which the reader can turn at will, thus creating the One Hundred Million Million Poems. The writer described it as a ‘DIY kit for making poems: a limited number of poems, it is true, but sufficient nevertheless to keep the reader reading for almost two hundred million years .’ Signed and inscribed by the author to critic and writer Maurice Nadeau, an excellent copy.