The full French text is accompanied by French-English vocabulary. Notes and a detailed introduction in English put the work in its social and historical context.

Includes the full French text, accompanied by French-English vocabulary. Notes and a detailed introduction in English put the work in its social and historical context.

Here, in one volume, are two remarkable novels by the chief spokesman of the so-called "new novel" which has caused such discussion and aroused such controversy. This volume, which offers incisive essays on Robbe-Grillet by Professor Bruce Morrissette of the University of Chicago and by French critics Roland Barthes and Anne Minor, also contains a helpful bibliography of writings by and about the author.

In his most famous and perhaps most typical work, Robbe-Grillet explores his principal preoccupation: the meaning of reality. The novel is set on a tropical banana plantation, and the action is seen through the eyes of a narrator who never appears in person, never speaks and never acts. He is a point of observation, his personality only to be guessed at, watching every movement of the other characters' actions as they flash like moving pictures across the distorting screen of a jealous mind. The result is one of the most important and influential books of our time, a completely integrated masterpiece that has already become a classic.

After a failed attempt on his life by an unknown terrorist cell, Professor Daniel Dupont decides to fake his own death. The government authorities, believing that the attack is part of a series of political assassinations, send Wallas, a recently promoted special investigator, to the provincial town where the crime took place. As he wanders the confusing streets of the town, he finds himself increasingly lost in a web of conspiracies, doppelgangers and memories. Cleverly deconstructing the detective genre, The Erasers, Alain Robbe-Grillet's first published novel, shifts between various characters and time frames, while maintaining the suspense of a conventional thriller. The result is an engrossing examination of consciousness and reality which is also one the founding texts of the nouveau roman school.

Set in an unspecified island kingdom, A Regicide tells the story of the statistician Boris who, after the electoral victory of the Church party in the country s elections, decides to assassinate the King on the day he is to visit the factory where he is employed. As the crime is described and relived, doubt sets in as to whether it has ever taken place. Written in 1949 but only published in 1979, Robbe-Grillet's first novel is a disquieting and satirical avant-garde political thriller which bridges the gap between traditional novel and the Nouveau Roman genre he would later espouse and make famous.

When Mathias, a travelling watch salesman, returns after many years to the island of his birth, a young girl is found dead on the rocks. As Mathias makes an increasingly tense recapitulation of his movements on the day of the event, tiny details slowly and inexorably accumulate. Through the warped screen of his distorted mind, the remembered images pile up until the reader is caught in his web of desperation. And yet in the end reality has lost all meaning, as the distinction between the narrator's recollections and the underlying facts are more and more blurred. This brilliantly executed novel, which showcases all the techniques that have secured Robbe-Grillet's place in the canon of Western literature, leaves behind a disturbing sense of unrest.

A man tells a woman that they have met before – that they became lovers but then agreed to separate for a year. The year is now up, and he has come back for her. At first, she remembers nothing, but as he relates their past together, real or imaginary, snapshots of memory appear – and she begins to believe him. As more details begin to re-emerge from the woman’s mind, the reader is shunted backwards and forwards between the past and the present, the actual and the illusory, that which is seen and that which is only glimpsed and guessed at. The director Alain Resnais was already famous for films such as Hiroshima, Mon Amour when he asked Alain Robbe-Grillet – the author of several seminal novels, including Jealousy and The Voyeur, and the leader of the Nouveau Roman school – to write a script for him. The result was Last Year at Marienbad, a film that, as well as winning the Golden Lion at the 1961 Venice Film Festival, has enthralled the critics, fascinated the public and become one of the greatest cult classics of modern cinema.

Alain Robbe-Grillet is internationally hailed as the chief spokesman for the noveau roman and one of the great novelists of the twentieth century. The Erasers, his first novel, reads like a detective story but is primarily concerned with weaving and then probing a complete mixture of fact and fantasy. The narrative spans the twenty-four-hour period following a series of eight murders in eight days, presumably the work of a terrorist group. After the ninth murder, the investigation is turned over to a police agent, who may in fact be the assassin.
Both an engrossing mystery and a sinister deconstruction of reality, The Erasers intrigues and unnerves with equal force as it pull us along to its ominous conclusion.

Collection of erotic films by French director Alain Robbe-Grillet. 'The Immortal One' (1963) stars Jacques Doniol-Valcroze and Françoise Brion as a sad man and a beautiful woman who meet unexpectedly and persue a passionate affair. 'Trans-Europe Express' (1967) tells the story of a film director, Jean (Robbe-Grillet), his producer and his assistant as they ride the Trans-Europe Express train from Paris to Antwerp. In 'The Man Who Lies' (1968), Jean-Louis Trintignant stars as Boris, a man who is believed to have betrayed his country during World War II. After he is taken in by the family of a dead rebel, he witnesses the lesbian affair between the man's sister and a servant and must decide whether to continue down the path of deception or get back on the straight and narrow. 'Eden and After' (1970) is an erotic horror starring Catherine Jourdan and Lorraine Rainer as students who take part in a series of games in a quiet café. In 'N. Rolls the Dice' (1971), a young man who makes a living playing dice becomes haunted by the image of two women with short hair. 'Successive Slidings of Pleasure' (1974) examines the story of a young woman believed to be a witch. When her partner Nora (Olga Georges-Picot) is found dead, stabbed through the heart with a pair of scissors, she is incarcerated in a convent prison where her sexual fantasies are perceived as the devil's work.

The Battle of Reichenfels has been fought and lost. The army is in flight. The enemy is expected to arrive in town at any moment. A soldier, carrying a parcel under his arm, is wandering through an unknown town. All the streets look the same, and he cannot remember the name of one where he was supposed to meet the man who had agreed to take the parcel. But he must deliver the parcel or at least get rid of it... A brilliant work from one of the finest exponents of the Nouveau Roman, In the Labyrinth showcases an inventive, hypnotic style which creates an uncanny atmosphere of deja vu, yet undermines the reader's expectations at every turn.

These two novellas demonstrate why Alain Robbe-Grillet, the leading practitioner and theorist of the noveau roman, is one of the most discussed and controversial writers of the post-war era. In La Maison de Rendez-vous, the master of the new novel creates a world of crime, intrigue, and passion dominated by Lady Ava's mysterious Blue Villa. Set in Hong Kong, the novella unfolds over the course of one evening, but the events of that night recur repeatedly, from the perspectives of different characters. Robbe-Grillet creates an unsettling work that challenges ideas about subjectivity and objectivity, fiction and fact, and the entire process of storytelling. A haunting, disorienting, and brilliantly constructed novel, Djinn is the story of a young man who joins a clandestine organization under the command of an alluring, androgynous American girl named Djinn. His search for the meaning of his mission and for possible clues to the identity of the mysterious Djinn, becomes a quest for his own identity in an ever-shifting time-space continuum.

Alain Robbe-Grillet has long been regarded as the chief spokesman for the controversial nouveau roman. This collection of brilliant short pieces introduces the reader to those techniques employed by Robbe-Grillet in his longer works. These intriguing, gemlike stories represent Robbe-Grillet's most accessible fiction.

Alain Robbe-Grillet, one of the leaders of the new French literary movement of the sixties, has long been regarded as the outstanding writer of the "nouveau roman, " as well as its major spokesman. "For a New Novel" reevaluates the techniques, ethos, and limits of contemporary fiction. This is a work of immense importance for any discussions of the history of the novel and for contemporary thinking about the future of fiction.

First published in 1953, and winner of the Feneon Prize, Robbe-Grillet's astonishing debut novel is a sinister, singular mystery centered around a series of eight murders in eight days. After the ninth murder, the investigation turns over to a police agent--but it soon looks like the agent has been crooked from the start. With deft sleight-of-hand, Robbe-Grillet conjures an unsteady reality where fact mixes with fantasy, producing an intriguing and unnerving puzzle.