French Fiction into the Twenty-First Century
The Return to the Story
Distributed for University of Wales Press
The French novel’s “return to the story” in the last decades of the twentieth century and the beginning of the twenty-first is has been widely acknowledged in literary scholarship. But is this assessment accurate? With French Fiction in the Twenty-First Century, Simon Kemp looks at the work of five contemporary writers—Annie Ernaux, Pascal Quignard, Marie Darrieussecq, Jean Echenoz, and Patrick Modiano—in the context of the current French literary scene, and examines how far they pursue the innovations of their predecessors and just how far they have turned their backs on the era of experiment.
"In what is a clear and accessible book, Kemp affirms that current French fiction explores narrative possibilities in order to express new visions of the human condition and the world. . . . Recommended."—Choice
Introduction
Chapter One: Annie Ernaux and the Narrating of Time
Chapter Two: Pascal Quignard and the Fringes of Narrative
Chapter Three: Marie Darrieussecq and the Voice of the Mind
Chapter Four: Jean Echenoz and the Uses of Digression
Chapter Five: Patrick Modiano and the Problem of Endings
The Return to the Story
Notes
Select Bibliography
Index
Literature and Literary Criticism: Romance Languages
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