Pinget's unillusioned tenderness towards the mixed creatures who inhabit his special French province makes him one of the most appealing of the Nouveaux Romanciers. Often compared to Beckett and Robbe-Grillet because of his stylistic demonstration of the inadequacy of language and the arbitrariness of narration, he departs from their examples by using anecdotes that are touching and unpretentious. Like Camus's Dr. Rieux, Pinget finds in man more to admire than condemn. (p. 182)

[Le Libera is an anti-novel,] set in the environs of Agapa like all his fiction and drama, including the fantasy pieces, and building on the same cast of characters…. The title, an echo from the Lord's Prayer ("Deliver us from evil") is introduced in the last five pages and modulates on the final page into the narrator's quasi-ironic prayer: "Libera me Domine … / De merda aeterna excusez le calembour." Resolute but alone, he faces his dilemma…. (pp...