Les Gommes (Eng: The Erasers) is the title of the debut novel by Alain Robbe-Grillet, first published in 1953. The novel reads like a detective story but is primarily concerned with weaving and then probing a complete mixture of fact and fantasy. The novel contains within it a deeper structure based on the story of Oedipus. A detective is seeking the assassin in a murder that has not yet occurred, only to discover that it is his destiny to become that assassin.