These two novellas demonstrate why Alain Robbe-Grillet the leading practitioner and theorist of the noveau roman is one of the most discussed and controversial writers of the post-war era. In La Maison de Rendez-vous the master of the "new novel" creates a world of crime intrigue and passion dominated by Lady Ava's mysterious Blue Villa. Set in Hong Kong the novella unfolds over the course of one evening but the events of that night recur repeatedly from the perspectives of different characters. Robbe-Grillet creates an unsettling work that challenges ideas about subjectivity and objectivity fiction and fact and the entire process of storytelling. A haunting disorienting and brilliantly constructed novel Djinn is the story of a young man who joins a clandestine organization under the command of an alluring androgynous American girl named Djinn. His search for the meaning of his mission and for possible clues to the identity of the mysterious Djinn becomes a quest for his own identity in an ever-shifting time-space continuum.
