French Fiction into the Twenty-First Century The Return to the Story

This book examines contemporary French literature in the light of a widely-held critical notion that it exists ‘in the wake’ of a period in which avant-garde experimental literature and postmodern writing-about-writing held sway. It looks at five notable current writers, namely Annie Ernaux, Pascal Quignard, Marie Darrieussecq, Jean Echenoz and Patrick Modiano in the context of the broader literary scene, to discover how far they continue to pursue the ideas of the previous generation, and how far they have turned their back on them.