New York Nouveau: How Postwar French Literature Became American

Postwar French writers were at the vanguard of global literary innovation-from the experimental minimalism of the Nouveau Roman to the literary games of the OuLiPo-but less often appreciated is the extent to which they worked closely with US editors and translators, published actively with American presses, and often theorized transatlantic connections within their work.

In this exciting new work, Sara Kippur proposes a new French literary history that traces the deep connections between postwar literary experimentalism and the New York publishing industry, compellingly arguing that US-based editors, publishers, producers, professors, and translators crucially intervened to shape French literature. While Kippur attends closely to well-known writers such as Marguerite Duras, Samuel Beckett, Eugène Ionesco, Georges Perec, and Alain Robbe-Grillet, she also amplifies the voices of those who have been less visible, though no less relevant, including women whose contributions have not received proper credit but who helped to foster a sense of new possibilities for twentieth-century French writing. With these untold histories, stitched together in this book through new archival discoveries from special collections and personal archives on both sides of the Atlantic, Kippur begins to dismantle rigid notions of canonicity, authorship, and national literature.

Sara Kippur is Associate Professor of French and Francophone Studies, Wellesley College and author of Writing It Twice: Self-Translation and the Making of a World Literature in French.