—Susan SontagTropisms—something like ‘prose poems’—as Sarraute calls them that—this is her form! Her texture is anti-novelistic, though she’s decided to write ‘novels’ and launched an important critique of the novel on the basis of her method.
Nathalie Sarraute (1900–1999) was a leading writer of French avant-garde literature. In 1963, she was awarded the Prix International de Littérature for her novel The Golden Fruits. Her best-selling novel Childhood (1983) was adapted into a one-act play starring Glenn Close.
Translated from the French by Maria Jolas
—The GuardianWitty and formally exact.
—Juan Vidal, NPR Best Books of 2015This collection of vignettes, made up of short scenes and anecdotes, reads like quiet prose poems that stay with the reader. Translated by Maria Jolas, Tropisms is a masterpiece, short but powerful in every sense.
—Pasha Malla, The Globe and MailThe book has such intensity that it feels imperative…her work is immersive and consuming; when you look up from the page you see and feel the world differently.
—Alain Robbe-Grillet, Paris ReviewIt was Sarraute who started the denunciation of ‘character’ in the Balzacian sense, and tried to find the inner impulses of the hero at the moment he endeavors to express himself. What she calls ‘tropisms’ are the tiny imperceptible interactions between people—the little games of aggression and retreat, the miniscule battles that constitute the present state of the psyche.
—Susan SontagTropisms—something like ‘prose poems’—as Sarraute calls them that—this is her form! Her texture is anti-novelistic, though she’s decided to write ‘novels’ and launched an important critique of the novel on the basis of her method.
—James Gibbons, BOOKFORUMReading Sarraute is like watching a news broadcast in which the anchorman speaks trivilaties and bromides while the crawl below sends word of seiges and conflagrations in a slowly unwinding procession.
—Hannah Arendt, The New York Review of BooksSarraute has cracked open the ‘smooth and hard’ surface of the traditional characters in order to discover the endless vibrations of moods and sentiments, the tremors of a never-ending series of earthquakes in the microcosm of the self.
—The New YorkerSarraute shows us in small immediate moves how a person can be pushed toward marriage or murder.
