Synopses & Reviews
Review
"Repetition is the high concept that made Robbe-Grillet's reputation....Into a plot of fractal complexity, Robbe-Grillet pours seemingly every gimmick of fictional doubling ever used. A partial list includes unsuspected identical twins, amazingly lifelike dolls, mirror reflections, and trompe l'oeil paintings. The text itself repeats, through page-spanning 'notes' that constitute a skeptical annotation of the main text." William Poundstone, Village Voice
Review
"One of the greatest books of the past few decades...[Repetition] gives to the coming century a foundational text." Francois Busnel, L'Express
Review
"Robbe-Grillet's...early novels...are not amusing costume jewelry but big, glittering diamonds." Edmund White, Los Angeles Times
Review
"Newcomers braced for surreal narrative lurches will find this an entertaining introduction to Robbe-Grillet's work. As the title coyly suggests, his admirers will find much of this territory familiar, but that only adds another layer of irony to Robbe-Grillet's witty allusions." Publishers Weekly
Review
"Illusion, lust, deception, criminality all are employed in Robbe-Grillet's eerie exploration of the strange force of repetition, of compulsively recollecting and reinventing the painful past." Booklist
Review
"The grand old man of the nouveau roman has published his first novel in two decades, and, faithful to its title, it is not at all new but, rather, a variation on old themes and obsessions. In fact, Repetition is a sort of deliberate distortion or alteration, or rewriting, or retelling of Robbe-Grillet's earlier books, in particular the first, The Erasers (1953)....Robbe-Grillet's conviction that the true writer has nothing to say, only the way he says it, remains undimmed, but seldom has the nouveau roman seemed so ancien." The New Yorker
Synopsis
Robbe-Grillet's novels have made him one of the most influential writers of the last half century. "Repetition, " his first novel in 20 years, is a triumphant accomplishment, an extraordinary tale of violence, espionage, and tricks of perception, set in the bombed-out Berlin of 1949 and rendered with an atmosphere reminiscent of Orson Welles's "The Third Man."