Fables of the Novel

Readers of the contemporary novel in France are witnessing the most astonishing reinvigoration of narrative prose since the New Novel of the 1950s. In the last few years, bold, innovative, and richly compelling novels have been written by a variety of young writers. These texts question traditional strategies of character, plot, theme, and message; and they demand new strategies of reading, too. Choosing ten novels published during the 1990s as examples of that trend, Warren Motte traces the resurgence of the novel in France. He argues that each of the novels under consideration here, quite apart from what other stories it tells, presents a?fable?of the novel that deals with the genre's possibilities, limitations, and future as a cultural form.

Warren Motte is chair of the Department of French and Italian at the University of Colorado, Boulder, where he specializes in contemporary writing and focuses particularly on experimental works that challenge conventional notions of literary form. He has written several studies of contemporary French Literature, including Fables of the Novel: French Fiction Since 1990, available from Dalkey Archive Press. Translator and editor of Oulipo: A Primer of Potential Literature, he also edited an issue of the journal SubStance dedicated to the work of Jacques Jouet, and is a contributing editor to Context magazine.