Michel Butor, a French novelist whose experiments with narrative and structure in the late 1950s and early ’60s put him at the forefront of the literary trend known as le nouveau roman (“the new novel”), died on Aug. 24 in Contamine-sur-Arve, in the Rhône-Alpes region of southeastern France. He was 89.

Family members reported his death to the newspaper Le Monde, which announced it.

Mr. Butor objected to being characterized as a member of the nouveau roman movement, although he shared a publisher, Les Éditions de Minuit, with Alain Robbe-Grillet, Nathalie Sarraute and Claude Simon, leading figures in the school. His novels shared certain characteristics with theirs — a cameralike detachment, an indifference to psychology, a preoccupation with physical details and the instability of human perception — but he took a more philosophical and political approach.

“One of the most important ways of affecting reality is to reach it through language,” he told Le Monde in July.

His novel “La Modification” (1957), published in English as “A Change of Heart” in 1959, told the story of a married man traveling from Paris to Rome to face his mistress and force a resolution to their affair, only to abandon the idea. Written, disorientingly, in the second person, with the reader addressed as “you,” it won the prestigious Prix Renaudot, ratifying Mr. Butor’s reputation as a writer to watch.