noun
A novel in which real people or events appear with invented names.
preposition
The hyphen in 'roman-à-clef' connects the two words together to form a compound noun.
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The author used a roman-à-clef to tell a story based on real-life events but with fictionalized characters.
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Have you heard of that novel that's a roman-à-clef? It's supposed to be really juicy!
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That book is basically a roman-à-clef of all the drama that went down in our friend group last summer.
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The painting was like a roman-à-clef of the artist's inner thoughts and emotions.