Traces of Ink

Before deciding to write professionally, Pinget practiced law in his native city of Geneva and studied painting at the Ecole des Beaux Arts in Paris. He is one of the less accessible of the so-called new novelists and has seemed little interested in attracting a large following. Nevertheless, The Inquisitory, awarded the 1962 Prix des Critiques, became a bestseller in France. It is essentially a monologue, a deaf old servant's meandering, half-truthful responses to the terse questions of an interrogator seeking information on a man who has vanished. As the old man speaks, he brings to light all of the vice and corruption of what appears to be a placid provincial town. In 1965 Pinget's Quelqu'un (Someone), about a man's search for a scrap of paper, won the Prix Femina. In addition to his work as a novelist, Pinget has also written a number of plays.

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