Introducing novels by the Nobel Prize for Literature author, Claude Simon, this text gives emphasis to peaks in his literary achievement: "The Flanders Road" (1960), "The Georgics" (1981) and "The Acacia" (1989). Alastair Duncan traces the development and recurrence of major themes, such as war, time and memory, and the constantly renewed inventiveness of Simon's manner. Duncan illustrates and comments on the various critical approaches which have been made to the novels over the years, from phenomenological interpretations, through structuralism to the autobiographical and psychobiographical approaches of the 1980s and 1990s. The text includes a chapter on Simon's most recent works ("Le Jardin des Plantes" 1997 and "Le Tramway" 2001).