Michel Butor

Michel Butor was born in 1926 in a suburb of Lille. After having studied literature and philosophy in Paris where he met many intellectuals, he left to teach in Egypt and had not since stopped travelling the world. From Manchester (a difficult experience which he writes about in L’Emploi du temps) to Switzerland (where he is nominated at the faculty of literature of the University of Geneva), via China, the United States and many other countries, his travels, both professional and exploratory are linked all through a vast body of works that explores all genres – poetry, essays, novels – up to their limits.

Influenced by André Breton and the surrealists, he is considered as a cofounder – alongside Nathalie Sarraute, Alain Robbe-Grillet and Claude Simon – of the «nouveau roman français», a literary genre which is characterised by the disappearance of intrigue, replaced by a confrontation of the writing to itself, by the exploration and the introspection of the different conditions and situations of the message, until its incapacity of being able to describe reality. However, Butor refuses to be labelled and defends a free and independent literature.

Selected bibliography

• Michel Butor, Paris : Seghers 2003
• Collation, Paris : Seghers, 2003
• A la frontière, Paris : la Différence, 1996
• Le sismographe amoureux. Improvisations sur Henri Michaux, Paris : la Différence, 1999
• Improvisations sur Balzac (3 vol.), 7 volumes, Paris : la Différence, 1998
• Gyroscope, Paris : Gallimard, 1996
• Transit, Paris : Gallimard, 1992
• Improvisations sur Rimbaud, Paris : la Différence, 1989
• Improvisations sur Flaubert, Paris : la Différence, 1984
• Boomerang, Paris : Gallimard,1978
• Matière de rêves (5 volumes), Paris : Gallimard, 1975-1985
• Où, Paris : Gallimard, 1971
• Mobile, étude pour une représentation des Etats-Unis, Paris : Gallimard, 1962
• Répertoire (5 vol.), Paris : Editions de Minuit, 1960-1982
• Le Génie du lieu (5 vol),Paris : Grasset, 1958
• La Modification, Paris : Editions de Minuit, 1957
• L'emploi du temps, Paris : Editions de Minuit, 1956
• Passage de Milan, Paris : Editions de Minuit, 1954