Portrait of a Man Unknown (Cyclopedia of Literary Characters)
At a glance:
- Author: Nathalie Sarraute
- First Published: 1948
- Type of Work: Novel
- Type of Plot: Experimental
- Time of Work: The late 1940’s
- Setting: Paris and an unnamed Dutch city
- Genres: Long fiction, Antistory
- Subjects: Parents and children, 1940’s, Paris, Individuality, Reality, Fathers, Truth, Imagination, Painting or painters, Pictures, Conformity, Netherlands or Dutch people
- Locales: Paris, France, Amsterdam, Netherlands
Characters Discussed
The narrator, a middle-aged man, rather neurotic, fascinated, intrigued, and finally obsessed with the relationship between his neighbors, an old man and his daughter. Like a detective, he spies on them constantly. To catch them in unguarded moments, he hides under stairways, peeks through windows, follows them in the street, and accosts them in museums and restaurants. He both delights in and shrinks from the drama between the two. He senses a love-hate relationship between them but experiences a similar, almost magnetic attraction to them followed by...
[The entire page is 685 words long]
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