"The hero comes from a long line of symbolic recluses and is called Adam Pollo.... [The Interrogation] has little rational development, but reads like a very intelligent collection of random ideas and even styles.... It is extremely ambitious and deliberately naive by turns; there are exotic moments of a sort of Lautreamont mysticism together with careful descriptions of totally irrelevant details.... Adam Pollo himself suffers, if that is the right word, from an extase materialiste, and the dividing lines between himself and other organisms are correspondingly weak. At different times he identifies himself with a dog, a drowned man, even rocks. The most hopeful of M. Le Clézio's several moods and manners is his own form of lucid lyricism, which suggests that he may one day produce something quite remarkable." —The Times Literary Supplement, 1964
