Nadja is the title of André Breton’s 1928 autobiographical Surrealist novel.
The book recounts Breton’s encounters with a mysterious woman he calls Nadja in Paris. It combines narrative, reflection, photographs and documentary details, making the city itself part of the work’s imaginative structure. Rather than following the conventions of a traditional novel, Nadja moves between observed events, chance associations and meditations on art, love and mental experience.
Breton was the principal theorist and leader of the Surrealist movement, and Nadja demonstrates his interest in chance encounters as gateways to hidden meanings. The book’s famous opening asks who he is, a question that frames the work as an inquiry into identity as well as an account of another person.
Nadja is sometimes confused with L'Amour fou, another important Breton book, but the two are separate works. L'Amour fou was published in 1937, nine years after Nadja, and explores related themes of chance, desire and revelation.