Erasers

After a failed attempt on his life by an unknown terrorist cell, Professor Daniel Dupont decides to fake his own death with the help of Doctor Juard. The government authorities, believing that the attack is part of a series of political assassinations, send Wallas, a recently promoted special investigator, from Paris to the provincial town where the crime took place, which by coincidence he visited as a child. As he wanders the confusing streets of the town, he finds himself increasingly lost in a web of conspiracies, doppelgangers and memories. Cleverly deconstructing the detective-fiction genre, ''The Erasers'', Alain Robbe-Grillet's first published novel, shifts between various narrators and time frames, while maintaining the suspense of a conventional thriller. The result is an engrossing examination of consciousness and reality which is also one of the founding texts of the Nouveau Roman school.