Djinn (novel)

Djinn

First edition book cover for Djinn (1981)
Author	Alain Robbe-Grillet
Translator	Yvone Lenard and Walter Wells
Country	France
Language	French
Genre	Nouveau Roman
Publisher	Editions de Minuit
Publication date	March 1981
Published in English	May 1982
Media type	Print
ISBN	(first edition, hardback)
OCLC	11519139
Dewey Decimal	843/.914 19
LC Class	PQ2635.O117 D54 1981

Djinn is a novel by French writer Alain Robbe-Grillet. It was written as a French textbook with California State University, Dominguez Hills professor Yvone Lenard using a process of grammatical progression. Each chapter covers a specific element of French grammar which becomes increasingly difficult over the course of the novel. The first five chapters are written in the present tense from the first person point of view. The sixth chapter is written partially in the third person past and partially in the first person present. The eighth chapter is written in the first person point of view, but the narrator has changed from the masculine Simon Lecoeur to an unknown female narrator.

The work was first released in the United States with the title Le Rendez-vous (The Meeting) and contained questions at the end of each chapter. The same year, Robbe-Grillet re-released the text, removing the questions and adding a prologue and an epilogue to frame the story. A year later, the novel was translated into English by Lenard and Walter Wells, also of California State University, Dominguez Hills.

In many ways, Djinn resembles a detective fiction novel; yet at the same time, it is difficult to class as such. It tells the story of Simon Lecoeur, a thirty-year-old man, who allies himself with an American woman named Jean (Djinn) to act as a counteragent to technology. Djinn/Jean seems to lead Simon on a wild chase through Paris, but as with many of Robbe-Grillet's other works, all is not as it appears.

The plot of Djinn is surrounded by a frame story, a technique that Robbe-Grillet also employed in his novel Dans le Labyrinthe (1959). The police search the home of the narrator, supposed to be Simon Lecoeur, and find the manuscript lying on the desk. The manuscript is named Le Rendez-vous (The Appointment), which differs from the name of the novel.

While the title Djinn seems to allude to a Genie or mystical spirit, it instead refers to the lead woman of the novel, Jean. In French, the name spelled Jean is pronounced [ʒɑ̃] and is the equivalent of the male name "John". The English pronunciation of Jean might be written more like djinn in French.