Fiction. Translated from the French by Barbara Wright. In this classic later work from French novelist Nathalie Sarraute, one finds a "delectably austere, beady-eyed book.... Phrases that give rise to the scenes or episodes are ordinary enough until Sarraute imagines for them a context which turns them from bland civilities into weapons of psychological warfare. Friends meet and converse, in a cafe or in the street, and are all sociability; except underneath, where the best of friends can be the most savage of opponents. Sarraute resorts sardonically to metaphor to indicate what words will not capture: the shameful and ineffable animosities that...imperil our urbanity" (The Times Literary Supplement).

Author Hometown: Paris FRA



About the author: Nathalie Sarraute (1900-1999) was the author of eleven novels, three works of criticism, a collection of plays, and an autobiography. She is most well known as one of the prime proponents, along with Alain Robbe-Grillet, Robert Pinget, and Claude Simon, of the Nouveau Roman. She won the International Prize for Literature in 1964 for her novel The Golden Fruits.

Reviews:
Jordan Anderson @ The Quarterly Conversation