One of the French avant-garde icons, author Alain Robbe-Grillet passed away on Monday. He was 85 years old.

Robbe-Grillet died at the Caen University Hospital in western France. He was hospitalized during the week-end due to cardiac problems.

Robbe-Grillet became made a name for his innovative writing style, which had a significant influence in the foundation of what is called “the new novel.” The current was initiated in the 1950s and includes names such as Nobel Prize laureate Claude Simon, Michel Butor and Nathalie Sarraute. The group’s works revolutionized literature, breaking the accepted rules of writing such as plot and character development, chronology, chapters or punctuation.

The first steps towards “the new novel” were made in the author’s “Les Gommes” (The Erasers) in 1953. The work depicted the story of a detective who investigates an apparent murder, but it is he in the end who slays the victim. Continuing with the innovative style, he won the France's Critics Prize with “Le Voyeur” (The Voyeur) in 1955, a novel imagining the world through the eyes of a sadistic killer.

Robbe-Grillet’s “Pour Un Nouveau Roman” (Toward a New Novel) of 1963 became a programmatic work for the French avant-gardism.

But the talent of the trained agronomist-turned writer went further literature. Robbe-Grillet focused also on cinematography, writing the screenplays for acclaimed movie such as Alain Resnais’ “Last Year At Marienbad.”

The writer became a member of France’s Legion of Honor and of the elite of Academie Francaise, being one of the 40 “immortals” of the prestigious institution.

President Nicolas Sarkozy issued a statement saying that Alain Robbe-Grillet’s passing away signified that  Academie Francaise had lost “without a doubt its most rebellious”  member and “an entire section of French intellectual and literary history has disappeared.”