Repetition - Paperback

by Alain Robbe-Grillet (Author), Richard Howard (Translator)

From the French master of the avant-garde: "A spy tale whose prime puzzle lies in the philosophical intricacies of its own construction" (Entertainment Weekly).

We are in the bombed-out Berlin of 1949, after the Second World War, rendered with an atmosphere reminiscent of Orson Welles' The Third Man. Henri Robin, a special agent of the French secret service, arrives in the ruined former capital to which he feels linked by a vague but recurrent childhood memory. But the real purpose of his mission has not been revealed to him, for his superiors have decided to afford him only as much information as is indispensable for the action expected of his blind loyalty. But nothing is what it seems, and matters do not turn out as anticipated . . .

"Exhibits a sensibility as nervous and contemporary-not to mention witty--as that of any novelist working today." --The Los Angeles Times

"Mirrors, doubles, double agents, repetitions, trompe l'oeil war paintings, dream sequences, sexual torture, a criminal mafia of postwar Nazis and murky memories add to the disquieting, disorienting literary puzzle." --San Francisco Chronicle

"A Gothic masterpiece . . . Repetition is fearfest like no other, and a rewarding text that demands to be reread again and again. The master hasn't lost his touch." --The Avon Grove Sun

Author Biography

Alain Robbe-Grillet (1922-2008) was born in Brest, France. He was one of the most important postwar avant-gardist, and along with Michel Butor, Nathalie Sarraute and Claude Simon Robbe-Grillet was a founder of the "New Novelists" or noveau roman literary movement.