Left to right: Claude Simon, Alain Robbe-Grillet, Robert Pinget, publisher Jérôme Lindon, Samuel Beckett, Nathalie Sarraute

“The Nouveau Roman (French pronunciation: ​[nuvo ʁɔmɑ̃], ‘new novel’) is a type of 1950s French novel that diverged from classical literary genres. Émile Henriot coined the term in an article in the popular French newspaperLe Monde on May 22, 1957 to describe certain writers who experimented with style in each novel, creating an essentially new style each time. Most of the founding authors were published by Les Éditions de Minuit with the strong support of Jérôme Lindon. Alain Robbe-Grillet, an influential theorist as well as writer of the Nouveau Roman, published a series of essays on the nature and future of the novel which were later collected in Pour un Nouveau Roman. Rejecting many of the established features of the novel to date, Robbe-Grillet regarded many earlier novelists…