Nathalie Sarraute was part of a French movement in the 1950s and 1960s known as the nouveau roman or new novel. This movement was a reaction to what had been one of France's most important literary movements, French Realism. But, while it is nominally an attempt to portray reality realistically, Realism actually has a number of different meanings—mostly depending on the person perceiving that reality. According to Balzac, French Realism laid the foundations for a particular kind of reality; what the new novelists did was to undermine that reality with yet another notion of reality, emphasizing that no one person's point of view is a standard for someone else. A face painted by Renoir is different from one by Picasso or Dalí, but the face remains a face. The new novelists decided not merely to record reality by representing it as closely as possible, but to invent it. The movement fashioned itself on exploration of forms. It is out of that tradition that one finds Sarraute.

In a 1990 Paris Review interview, “Nathalie Sarraute, The Art of Fiction No. 115,” Sarraute says some revealing things about the text: