French novel from the 1950s on went through a similar experimentation in the group of writers published by "Les Éditions de Minuit", a French publisher; this "Nouveau roman" ("new novel"), associated with Alain Robbe-Grillet, Marguerite Duras, Robert Pinget, Michel Butor, Samuel Beckett, Nathalie Sarraute, Claude Simon, also abandoned traditional plot, voice, characters and psychology. To a certain degree, these developments closely paralleled changes in cinema in the same period (the Nouvelle Vague). Among the leading women writers were Colette, Simone de Beauvoir, Hélène Cixous, Marguerite Duras and Monique Wittig. Twentieth century French literature did not undergo an isolated development and reveals the influence of writers and genres from around the world. In turn, French literature has also had a radical impact on world literature. Because of the creative spirit of the French literary and artistic movements at the beginning of the century, France gained the reputation as being the necessary destination for writers and artists. Important foreign writers who have lived and worked in France (especially Paris) in the twentieth century include: Oscar Wilde, Gertrude Stein, Ernest Hemingway, William S. Burroughs, Henry Miller, Anaïs Nin, James Joyce, Samuel Beckett, Julio Cortázar, Vladimir Nabokov, Eugène Ionesco. Some of the most important works of the century were written by foreign authors in French (Eugène Ionesco, Samuel Beckett). France has been more permissive in terms of censorship, and many important foreign language novels were originally published in France while being banned in America: Joyce's Ulysses (published by Sylvia Beach in Paris, 1922), Vladimir Nabokov's Lolita and William S. Burroughs's Naked Lunch (both published by Olympia Press), and Henry Miller's Tropic of Cancer (published by Obelisk Press). Art Following on the radical developments of Impressionism and Post-Impressionism at the end of the nineteenth century, the first half of the twentieth century in France saw the even more revolutionary experiments of cubism, dada and surrealism, artistic movements that would have a major impact on western, and eventually world, art. After World War II, while French artists explored such tendencies as tachism, fluxus and new realism, France's preeminence in the visual arts was eclipsed by developments elsewhere (the United States in particular). See also 2005 civil unrest in France French law on secularity and conspicuous religious symbols in schools Liberalism and radicalism in France Non-conformists of the 1930s Notes References Bell,David, et al. A Biographical Dictionary of French Political Leaders since 1870 (1990), 400 short articles