The Oulipo's members have included luminaries of the calibre of Italo Calvino, Marcel Duchamp and Georges Perec. In 1979 Georges Perec wrote a brief entertainment for a publisher's catalogue: The Winter Journey. It became his most reprinted text, and revealed an extraordinary literary discovery, a secret concealed at the heart of modern French literature. Following Perec's death, the group began writing sequels to this tale, and gradually this became a sort of initiation to the group: new members were encouraged to write a Winter Journey'. And so a loose narrative was born.'