Repetition

The French spokesperson for nouveau roman pens a creepy, atmospheric spy novel set in war-ravaged 1949 Berlin as Henri Robin, an agent for the French secret service, embarks on a mission whose real purpose he does not know.

A spy novel about a French agent in 1949 Berlin becomes an oedipal journey into the agent's past and an adventure in unreliable narration in this work by nouveau roman pioneer Robbe-Grillet, his first in 20 years. Henri Robin (or so his passport identifies him) is a spy crossing Europe on a train, pondering a mission that has yet to be revealed to him. As he enters the ravaged city, Robin is haunted by flashbacks, even though, ostensibly, he has never been to Berlin before. His assignment, he learns, is to watch a murder that's supposed to take place in an outdoor plaza. Robin observes closely, but when he goes to recount the details, his story is confused and contradictory, and Robin finds himself in the heart of the murder investigation. As the nebulous case plays out, Robin comes to live with the murder victim's wife and adolescent daughter, Gigi, the latter representing a pivotal link to Robin's family history as well as the espionage machinations. Robbe-Grillet shifts back and forth between the criminal investigation, the espionage plot and the playful Freudian analysis of Robin's childhood and subconscious. Extensive footnotes introduce the possibility that Robin may in fact be a lunatic. Newcomers braced for surreal narrative lurches will find this an entertaining introduction to Robbe-Grillet's work. As the title coyly suggests, his admirers will find much of this territory familiar, but that only adds another layer of irony to Robbe-Grillet's witty allusions.
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.

The grand old man of the nouveau roman has published his first novel in two decades, and, faithful to its title, it is not at all new but, rather, a variation on old themes and obsessions. In fact, "Repetition" is a sort of deliberate distortion—or alteration, or rewriting, or retelling—of Robbe-Grillet's earlier books, in particular the first, "The Erasers" (1953). The plot, such as it is, concerns a French secret agent who, in 1949, is sent to Berlin, where he witnesses a murder. This leads him to search out his own past. The reader, meanwhile, is led to distrust every narrator who pops up. Robbe-Grillet's conviction that the true writer has nothing to say, only the way he says it, remains undimmed, but seldom has the nouveau roman seemed so ancien.
Copyright © 2005 The New Yorker

In Fifties France, Robbe-Grillet helped originate the nouveau roman, or "new novel," which challenged traditional concepts of narration. He returns after a 20-year silence with a sort of literary thriller, set in 1949 Berlin. Henri Robin doesn't know why the French Secret Service has sent him to the devastated city, but he has the uneasy feeling that he has been here before.
Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc.

French writer Robbe-Grillet has been at the forefront of the nouveau roman movement since the publication of his first novel, The Erasers, in 1953, writing a number of richly labyrinthine and allusive works. It's been 20 years since his last novel, and his newest, elegantly translated by Howard, transforms a tale of espionage set in 1949 Berlin into a psychological quest into one man's precarious sense of self, persistent Oedipal urges and regrets, and sadistic erotic fantasies. Robbe-Grillet's mysterious noir spy story begins on a crowded train when a special agent traveling with papers attesting to multiple identities is stunned to come face-to-face with his doppelganger. This encounter is the first of many confounding meetings with doubles and twins as this covert man of many names, beset by baffling memories, dreams, and hallucinations, finds himself emerging from drug-induced stupors in the city's ruins somehow implicated in murder, kidnapping, and torture. Illusion, lust, deception, criminality--all are employed in Robbe-Grillet's eerie exploration of the strange force of repetition, of compulsively recollecting and reinventing the painful past. Donna Seaman
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