Jean-François Vilar (1947-2014) was a leading exponent of political crime fiction in France in the 1980s and 1990s. Paris, Prague, art and 'anti-art' from surrealism to Jacques Monory, 19th and 20th century revolutionary politics and their cortege of ever-present pasts, from the French Revolution to the Algerian War - these are only some of the drivers of his highly original novels. Vilar deploys the unsettling tropes of trompe l'oeil, repetition, reproduction and rehearsal, together with a knowing, self-reflexive textuality, to produce a subversive and sinister theatricality. In this first full-length study of his work, Margaret Atack surveys not only Vilar's novels but also his shorter fiction, journalism, photobooks, and contributions to art and exhibition catalogues. From the ludic, if entirely serious, assassinations of political art in his first prize-winning novel C'est toujours les autres qui meurent, to the devastating unreality of massacre and extermination, Vilar's work constitutes a distinctive and important commentary on the murderous twentieth century.

Margaret Atack is Professor of French at the University of Leeds.