“I dream of a novel that possesses ubiquity”, declared Hélène Frappat when she began to write Le mont Fuji n’existe pas. But writers ought to be wary of what they dream for. Le mont Fuji n’existe pas is not exactly a novel. It is several novels which are neither completely here, nor completely elsewhere – a rich field of possibilities involving a series of encounters that read like a succession of phantom novels, or worse still, of possible novels.

A ludic exploration (like a dangerous game of Truth or Dare?) of the shifting frontier between truth and fiction, secrets and literature. By turns magician and mechanic, Hélène Frappat, who for a long time has identified with the superhero Fantômette, oversees the investigation, at times revealing the inner workings of her own writing and at others plunging them into obscurity.