Les Shadoks

Fiction of the Absurd Other Authors This page is not intended to be a complete survey of absurdist fiction, only to pay homage to a few select authors. Along with the better-known playwrights of the Theatre of the Absurd, the most notable omission here is Samuel Beckett. Others include Jean Genet, Jean-Paul Sartre and André Gide. For Raymond Roussel and other precursors of Surrealism and the theatre of the absurd, see my Surrealist Writers page. Additional precursors of absurdist fiction include: Voltaire's (Candide), Nietzsche, Dostoyevski and the Biblical Ecclesiastes. Related but distinct is the Nonsense movement typified by Lewis Carroll and Edward Lear. Examples of contemporary absurdist fiction include Catch-22 by Joseph Heller and the work of Julio Cortázar, John Kennedy Toole's A Confederacy of Dunces, Richard Brautigan, Donald Barthelme and Walter Abish. Current efforts to continue the Absurdist Fiction tradition include the New Absurdist Movement, online at amr.obook.org.