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Article: A not to be forgotten novel about memory.(Books)(On Books)
- Article from:
- The Washington Times (Washington, DC)
- Article date:
- July 27, 1997
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 1997 News World Communications, Inc. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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The Russian-born French novelist Nathalie Sarraute's first published volume was "Tropismes" (1939). The focus of that book's short pieces - attraction and repulsion among individuals, emphasizing the failure or at least the limits of language - would come to characterize the writer's work.
Novels such as "Portrait d'un inconnu" (1948) and "Martereau" (1953) established Mrs. Sarraute as a leading exponent of what Jean-Paul Sartre dubbed the "nouveau roman," or new novel, in which traditional ideas about character and plot, even identity itself, were played down - echoing Marxist and other political thought fashionable on the French left at the time.
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