Djinn | Writing Style & Techniques

Djinn Techniques/Literary Precedents

The five chapters of the text, which are "found" by the anonymous narrator on Simon LeCoeur's desk, are narrated in the present indicative tense, as if what is being described were indeed happening at the moment of the reading. A similar narrative technique was employed in Jealousy (1959; La Jalousie, 1957), which begins with the word "now." Chapter six of Djinn is partially narrated in the past tense by a third person who seems to have limited omniscience, but shifts back to the first person, present tense towards the end, a mode which continues into chapter seven. About a third of the way through that chapter, the narration shifts inexplicably back to third person, past tense. Chapter eight is first person, past tense, but the narrator is no longer Simon; it is now a girl, presumably Djinn, telling her version of the events. After her "vertiginous fall" the narration shifts...
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