Alain Robbe-Grillet Biography

Alain Robbe-Grillet was the founder of the movement known as Nouveau Roman (“new novel”), a part of the French New Wave in literature and film in the 1950s. Because his novels and films avoid conventional narrative structure and character development, they are sometimes called “anti-novels.” Robbe-Grillet’s work has been praised by some critics as daring and challenging, and dismissed by others as just plain confusing. Though primarily known as a novelist, he was also famous for his screenplay to the Alain Resnais film L’Année Derniére á Marienbad (Last Year at Marienbad, 1961). His novels include Le Voyeur (1955), La jalousie (1965) and Djinn (1981), and his films include The Immortal One (1963), Trans-Europe-Express (1966) and La Belle Captive (1983, also known as The Beautiful Prisoner).