French Literature Reviews - 2026
A. Prstojevic, The Novel Facing History
Novel and Narrative Prose
The Novel Facing History
An Essay on Claude Simon and Danilo Kiš
The Novel Facing History offers a comparative reading of Danilo Kiš's family trilogy (Early Sorrows (1969), Garden, Ashes (1965), Hourglass (1972)) and four novels by Claude Simon (The Flanders Road (1960), Histoire (1967), The Georgics (1980), and The Acacia (1989)). Marked by the question of war, both novelistic universes accord a central place to characters doubly grappling with 20th-century history, through direct contact with extreme situations and through the long detour of a family history. They thus raise the question of the means available to contemporary fiction to express historical trauma (war, murder, deportation). The present essay attempts to provide an answer through a reflection on the eloquence specific to the novelistic form, leading to the definition of the novel of narrative formation, but also through an analysis of the mechanisms governing the search for the historical guilt of the main characters, thereby leading both authors to establish a clever play with historical archives, allowing them to anchor their fiction in factual reality.
Alexandre Prstojevic, PhD in General and Comparative Literature from Paris III University, is an Associate Professor at the National Institute for Oriental Languages and Civilizations (INALCO) and an associate member of the CRAL (Center for Research on Arts and Language — CNRS/EHESS) and the CEEM (Center for Central European Studies). His recent work focuses on the relationship between fiction and history, exile literature, and the representation of the Holocaust in novelistic narratives. He is the founder and scientific director of the electronic journal Vox Poetica (www.vox-poetica.org).
Alexandre Prstojevic situates his comparative study within the rich tradition of comparative literature and twentieth-century European narrative scholarship. By examining the works of French novelist Claude Simon and Serbian writer Danilo Kiš, the essay engages with central debates in modern literary theory regarding how prose fiction represents historical catastrophe. Both authors emerged in the post-WWII literary landscape, a period deeply marked by the imperative to bear witness to totalitarian violence, displacement, and the breakdown of traditional historical narratives.
This scholarly study will interest researchers, graduate students, and readers focused on contemporary European literature, the poetics of testimony, and the intersections of historiography and fiction. The book offers valuable critical tools for analyzing how narrative forms negotiate the burdens of collective memory and individual trauma. It provides a nuanced framework for understanding the ethical and aesthetic strategies deployed by writers who seek to anchor imaginative prose in the verifiable facts of history without sacrificing the autonomy of art.