Preview of Djinn Summary:

In Djinn, readers familiar with RobbeGrillet's work once again find themselves in a Kafkaesque world in which objects are so painstakingly described as to seem significant, although what they signify is never clarified, chronology is disordered, and events which seem to be taking place later appear not to have been "real" at all. Like The Erasers (1964; Les Gommes, 1953), Djinn is the story of a quest, although the object and purpose of the quest is far less certain here than in the earlier work. The narrator (he is called Simon LeCoeur, but his very identity is called into question throughout) enters a hangar at the appointed hour of sixthirty where he is to meet someone.

Seeing a man dressed in hat and trench coat, like a detective from "some old . . . movie of the thirties," he presents himself and recites the coded message.

When the "man...