Offering interdisciplinary criticism and methodology, Melancholies of Knowledge includes essays by scientists, social scientists, and literary critics on the work of the French novelist Michel Rio.

It provides a non-specialist's description of the most important scientific changes in the century - easily understandable and related to issues of concern in the humanities - as well as an opportunity to see how these scientific changes are being incorporated into literary discourse, into the human element outside of theory or the laboratory.

In presenting a new methodology that proposes true interdisciplinarity, Melancholies of Knowledge identifies a new class of contemporary fiction and, as a test case, provides the first serious criticism of a major contemporary French author.