A surrealist horror novel, The Tenant was described by writer John Fowles as a book in "the Kafka tradition.
"[1] The Tenant is the story of a Parisian of Polish descent, an exploration of alienation and identity, asking questions about how we define ourselves.
[2] Trelkovsky, a Parisian man, has been thrown out on the street and desperately needs to find a place to live.
He finds an affordable apartment, leased to a girl named Simone Choule, who is in a coma after a suicide attempt in which she jumped out of the windows, screaming.
Trelkovsky soon falls prey to paranoid obsessions about his neighbors and dissociates, taking on Choule's identity.