Reading Nathalie Sarraute

Nathalie Sarraute is among the most prominent and highly respected French writers of the twentieth century. This study explores the evolution of Sarraute's prose writings from intense concern with shaping the response of their readers, to the more recent withdrawal of the authorial voice into self-sufficient internal dialogue. Emer O'Beirne considers the growing disillusionment with the reader reflected in Sarraute's work, and the conception of reading underlying it. Yet the texts themselves allow an alternative view of reading to emerge, one which confirms the bond between author and reader.