Ellis Island doesn’t tell the island’s secret history as an internment camp for immigrants, prisoners of war, and US citizens of German, Italian, and Japanese descent during and in the aftermath of World War II, but it allows us to imagine how Perec would go about cataloguing it. An inventory of what is to be found in today’s American detention centers might serve as a discontinuous sequel, perhaps trumping Perec’s own summation of Ellis Island as “the ultimate place of exile.”

—Mónica de la Torre