The Erasers is a detective novel by
Alain Robbe-Grillet, originally published in French as Les Gommes in 1953. The novel deals with attempts to find the assassin
of a professor named Daniel Dupont who was supposed to be killed in the night
before the novel's setting. The novel is set in an unnamed city, covers a full
day that a government's special agent spends to find out the murderer. The
novel concludes much like the world famous classical Greek tragedy Oedipus Rex by Sophocles revealing to the
readers that the one searching the murderer himself turns to be the murderer. Due
to its similar plot structure with dramatic irony and other similar elements, The Erasers can be taken as a rewriting
and/or rereading of the classical mythical tragedy of Oedipus.
