A wide-ranging account of French literature of the 1950s and 1960s showing how politically engaged leading writers were.

Daniel Just is Assistant Professor in the Department of Political Science at Bilkent University, Ankara. He has published a number of articles in journals including the Modern Language Review, New Literary History, MLN, the Forum for Modern Language Studies, and Philosophy and Literature.

1. Introduction: literature and engagement; 2. Neutral writing and Roland Barthes's theory of exhausted literature; 3. Maurice Blanchot and the politics of narrative genres; 4. Literary weakness: Maurice Blanchot, commitment, and decolonization; 5. The poverty of history and memory: Albert Camus's Algeria; 6. Albert Camus and the politics of shame; 7. Marguerite Duras, war traumas, and the dilemmas of literary representation; 8. Literary void: ethics and politics in Marguerite Duras's hybrid stories; 9. Conclusion: the literature of exhaustion, weakness, and blankness; Bibliography.