The term anti-novel came into vogue in the late fifties to describe those works which oppose, parody, or in some way attempt to transcend the form and content of the novel. According to M.H. Abrams, an anti-novel is:
[A] work which is deliberately constructed in a negative fashion relying for its effects on omitting or annihilating traditional elements of the novel, and on playing against the expectations established in the reader by the novelistic methods and conventions of the past. (122)
The term is usually associated with examples of the new novel, the modern novel, and the postmodern novel.