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The scandalous self-taught writer Rétif de la Bretonne happens to be a privileged witness of the first years of the French Revolution. In his Nuits révolutionnaires, he tries to grasp the political actuality of the 1790s but he also shows that it is impossible to write about it. As reality is deprived of its readability by the turmoil of actuality, it is the writer’s duty to build some meaning from ruins. Thanks to Rétif de la Bretonne, we shall try to understand how fiction and actuality interweave during the unprecedented disruption that the French Revolution has represented.