The Enemy

by Robert Pinget, Barbara Wright (Translator)

Fiction. THE ENEMY is made of 144 sections. Each section seems to have a life of its own. The characters (the master, the servant, the curator, the child victim, the secretary) appear through all of them but at different periods of time, in different guises and with differing relationships to one another. The master is writing his memoirs. A secretary helps him to organize them then departs. Another replaces him who must deal with: Fragments of totally unrelated reports, resolutely contradictory statements. The master questions the secretary. "Well then, still in the shit? .you've attached too much importance to some statements that were no more valid than others." The master struggles with an adversary who may be his double. He searches for a presence.

89 pages, Paperback

First published June 1, 1975

About the author

Robert Pinget was a Swiss-born French novelist and playwright associated with the nouveau roman movement.

After completing his law studies and working as a lawyer for a year, he moved to Paris in 1946 to study at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts.

In 1951, he published his first novel Entre Fantoine et Agapa. After publishing two other novels, but then having his fourth rejected by Gallimard, Pinget was recommended by Alain Robbe-Grillet and Samuel Beckett to Jérôme Lindon, head of Éditions de Minuit, where he subsequently published Graal flibuste in 1956. Éditions de Minuit became his main publisher.

Scholars and critics have often associated his work with that of his friend Samuel Beckett, who he met in 1955.

(from Wikipedia)