antinovel

The antinovel, or anti-novel, is a term used to describe a broad set of experimental novels that deliberately undermine the conventions of traditional fiction—plot, character psychology, and a clear, omniscient narrative voice. Emerging in mid-20th-century France as part of the nouveau roman (New Novel) movement, antinovel writers sought to break away from realist representation and to question what a novel could be. Key figures typically associated with antinovel tendencies include Alain Robbe-Grillet, Michel Butor, Nathalie Sarraute, and Claude Simon.

Characteristics include a rejection of linear plotting and straightforward causality, a de-emphasis of interiority and character psychology, and a focus on form, language, and description. Narration may be oblique, detached, or self-referential, and readers are invited to interpret gaps, unresolved events, or ambiguities. Objects, settings, and processes may be depicted with precision but without mediating narrative meaning. The works often foreground experimental structure, repetition, and the materiality of language.

Notable examples and works associated with antinovel tendencies include Robbe-Grillet's La Jalousie (Jealousy, 1957) and Le Voyeur (The Voyeur), which present a supposedly objective description that resists interpretation; Michel Butor's La Modification (The Change, 1957), a novel built around a single day and a decision that unsettles conventional causality; Nathalie Sarraute's Tropisms (1939) and her later prose, which foreground subjectivity as interruption rather than psychologized interiority.

Scholarly debate about the antinovel centers on its status as a literary movement and its influence on postmodern fiction. Critics have lauded its formal risks and its emphasis on language, while others have criticized it for obscurity and detachment. Regardless, the antinovel significantly shaped later experimentation in narrative form and the broader evolution of 20th-century prose.