The moped belongs to Corporal Pollak Henri, who every evening rattles from the barracks to his home in Montparnasse, transforming himself into an obvious civilian by shedding his uniform and joining his buddies, who discuss Hegel and Lukács over plenty of red wine. One day, his friend Kara - what was his name again? Karasek? Karamalz? Karabambuli? - is drafted into the war in Algeria and doesn't want to go. What to do? They devise a draft-dodging plan that ranges from a complicated arm fracture to feigning madness to pretending to commit suicide. But Kara, in any case, goes his own way. A cheerful anarchist text that, using the entire arsenal of Perec's rhetorical (nonsense) figures, pays homage to pacifism. The brilliant, uniquely humorous translation by Eugen Helmlé makes reading it a special experience.