Pioneer of the so-called “new novel” genre, French writer Alain Robbe-Grillet died Monday at the age of 85 following a brief hospitalization for a heart ailment.

The novelist was taken to the Caen University Hospital in France over the weekend for cardiac problems and died on Monday morning, the Academie Francaise (French Academy) said, according to AFP.

Born on 18 August 1922, in Brest, western France, Robbe-Grillet studied agricultural engineering and worked as a statistician and an agronomist before finding fame as a writer.

He numbered among the most prominent of France’s “new novelists” that emerged in the 1950s, which included Nobel Prize laureate Claude Simon, Michel Butor and Nathalie Sarraute.

“New novel” was aimed at “all those seeking new forms for the novel…and all those who have determined to intent the novel, in other words to invent man,” Robbe-Grillet said in “Pour un Nouveau Roman” ( Toward a New Novel) a critical essay published in 1963 in which he developed the theory of the “new novel.”

Leaving aside traditional literary devices such as plot, narrative, and chronology, the “new” novelists see story subordinated to structure, with the significance of objects more important than human action.

Robbe-Grillet became famous with his debut novel, “Les Gommes” (The Erasers) in 1953 that tells the story of a murder committed by the detective who has come to investigate it. The novel established him as a leader of a new generation of writers.

Following “Les Gommes,” Robbe-Grillet went on to publish more than a dozens novels over a 20-year period including “Le Voyeur” (The Voyeur) in 1955 and “La Jalousie” (Jealousy) in 1957.

Due to his artistic fame, he was invited in 1961 to write the film scrip for “L’Annee Derniere a Marienbad” (Last Year at Marienbad), considered almost a reflection of the “new novel” in film form, with a repetitive, dream-like interaction of three nameless characters in a chateau.

Robbe-Grillet also wrote film script for 1963’s “L’Immortelle” (The Immortal), 1966’s “Trans-Europ-Express,” and 1968’s “L’Homme Qui Ment” (The Man Who Lies).

In 2004, Robbe-Grillet was inducted into France’s Legion of Honor and elected to the Academie Francaise, being one of the 40 so-called “immortals” of the prestigious institution, the anointed protector of the French language. He never took his seat.

Robbe-Grillet was also notorious in the United States where she taught in New York and St. Louis for many years until 1990.

“The Academie Francaise today loses one of its most illustrious members, and without a doubt its most rebellious. An entire section of French intellectual and literary history has disappeared,” President Nicolas Sarkozy said in a statement, according to the Associated Press.

Robbe-Grillet is survived by his wife, novelist Catherine Robbe-Grillet.