Queneau's Fiction

Raymond Queneau (1903–76) was an important and influential contemporary of Camus and Sartre and figures among the most significant of modern French writers, though his work is still not widely known in the English-speaking world. He was a poet, translator, publisher and encyclopedist, and also wrote for stage, cinema and concert hall. However his greatest achievement is probably to be found in his fictional works, of which the best known is Zazie dans le Métro. Originally published in 1985, this book was the first full-length general study of Queneau in English. It offers the uninitiated reader a straightforward introduction to his novels and short stories while suggesting to the specialist the possibility of fresh approaches to familiar territory. Separate chapters deal with Queneau's inventive language and style, his varied use of narrative form, the imagined world elaborated in his texts, and the values which underlie them.