Gustave Flaubert, Samuel Beckett and Marie NDiaye can be considered as visionaries of a peculiarly radical form of failure, their protagonists and texts alike sliding inexorably into unmanageable states of paradox, incompletion and disintegration. What are the implications of these authors’ experiments in splitting and negativity, experiments which seem to indulge the most cynical aspects of nihilism, whilst at the same time grappling with the very foundations of politicized and psychic truth? In this unusual edited volume of comparative analyses, Andrew Asibong and Aude Campmas bring together ten provocative and illuminating essays, each of which approaches the various ‘failures’ of the bizarre trio of canonical francophone writers along three principal axes of investigation: the aesthetic, the emotional and the political.