Jealousy

Description

In his most famous and perhaps most typical work, Robbe-Grillet explores his principle 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.

Alain Robbe-Grillet (1922-2008) is best known as the pioneering spokesman of the Nouveau Roman, a greatly influential movement in post-war French fiction, and as the author of Jealousy and The Voyeur.

Robbe-Grillet is a visual novelist for whom perception is intrinsically fascinating but fraught with uncertainty. * The Daily Telegraph * Robbe-Grillet's career was built on a sly and amusing paradox: of using fiction over and over again to undo the conventions of fiction. But how cleverly and engagingly he did it. * The Independent * The finest novel about love since Proust. -- Vladimir Nabokov The novel remains striking in its originality, and Richard Howard's translation from 1959 has held up well. * TLS *