In literary criticism, autofiction is a form of fictionalized autobiography. Autofiction combines two mutually inconsistent narrative forms, namely autobiography and fiction. An author may decide to recount their life in the third person, to modify significant details and characters, using fictive subplots and imagined scenarios with real life characters in the service of a search for self. In this way, autofiction shares similarities with the

Bildungsroman In literary criticism, a ''Bildungsroman'' (, plural ''Bildungsromane'', ) is a literary genre that focuses on the psychological and moral growth of the protagonist from childhood to adulthood (coming of age), in which character change is import ...

as well as the

New Narrative New Narrative is a movement and theory of experimental writing launched in San Francisco in the late 1970s by Robert Glück and Bruce Boone. New Narrative strove to represent subjective experience honestly without pretense that a text can be absol ...

movement and has parallels with faction, a

genre Genre () is any form or type of communication in any mode (written, spoken, digital, artistic, etc.) with socially-agreed-upon conventions developed over time. In popular usage, it normally describes a category of literature, music, or other f ...

devised by Truman Capote to describe his novel '' In Cold Blood''. Autofiction is a genre of literature which includes New Narrative, amongst others. Serge Doubrovsky coined the term in 1977 with reference to his novel ''Fils''. However, autofiction arguably existed as an intergeneric practice with ancient roots long before Doubrovsky coined the term. Michael Skafidas argues that the first-person narrative can be traced back to the confessional subtleties of Sappho's lyric “I." Philippe Vilain distinguishes autofiction from autobiographical novels in that autofiction requires a first-person narrative by a protagonist who has the same name as the author. Elizabeth Hardwick's novel '' Sleepless Nights'' and Chris Kraus's ''

I Love Dick ''I Love Dick'' is a novel by American artist and author Chris Kraus. Published by Semiotext(e) in 1997, ''I Love Dick'' merges fiction and memoir formats to explore the writer's psycho-sexual obsession with the eponymous "Dick", a media theoris ...

'' have been deemed early seminal works popularizing the form of autofiction. The genre is associated with autobiographical novels by both women and queer authors. Critics and journalists have polarizing views on the genre. In

India India, officially the Republic of India (Hindi: ), is a country in South Asia. It is the List of countries and dependencies by area, seventh-largest country by area, the List of countries and dependencies by population, second-most populous ...

, autofiction has been associated with the works of Hainsia Olindi and postmodern

Tamil Tamil may refer to: * Tamils, an ethnic group native to India and some other parts of Asia ** Sri Lankan Tamils, Tamil people native to Sri Lanka also called ilankai tamils **Tamil Malaysians, Tamil people native to Malaysia * Tamil language, na ...

writer

Charu Nivedita Charu Nivedita (born 18 December 1953) is a postmodern, transgressive Tamil writer, based in Chennai, India. His novel ''Zero Degree'' was longlisted for the 2013 edition of Jan Michalski Prize for Literature. ''Zero Degree'' was inducted int ...

. His novel ''

Zero Degree ''Zero Degree'' is a 1998 postmodern, transgressive, lipogrammatic novel by Tamil author Charu Nivedita, later translated into Malayalam and English. Awards and accolades *''Zero Degree'' was longlisted for the 2013 edition of Jan Michalsk ...

'', a groundbreaking work in Tamil literature and his recent Novel ''Marginal Man'' are examples of this genre. In

Urdu Urdu (;"Urdu"
'' Rahman Abbas Rahman Abbas (born 30 January 1972) is an Indian fiction writer and the recipient of the India's highest literary Award '' Sahitya Akademi Award'' for his fourth novel '' Rohzin'' in 2018. He is also the recipient of the two State Academy Award ...

are considered major work of autofiction, especially his two novels ''Nakhalistan Ki Talash'' (Search of an Oasis) and ''Khuda Ke Saaye Mein Ankh Micholi'' (Hide and Seek in the Shadow of God). Japanese author Hitomi Kanehara wrote a novel titled '' Autofiction''. In a 2018 article for

New York Magazine ''New York'' is an American biweekly magazine concerned with life, culture, politics, and style generally, and with a particular emphasis on New York City. Founded by Milton Glaser and Clay Felker in 1968 as a competitor to ''The New Yorker' ...

s "Vulture", literary critic Christian Lorentzen wrote, "The term autofiction has been in vogue for the past decade to describe a wave of very good American novels by the likes of Sheila Heti, Ben Lerner, Teju Cole, Jenny Offill, and Tao Lin, among others, as well as the multivolume epic ''My Struggle'' by the Norwegian

Karl Ove Knausgaard Karl may refer to: People * Karl (given name), including a list of people and characters with the name * Karl der Große, commonly known in English as Charlemagne * Karl Marx, German philosopher and political writer * Karl of Austria, last Austrian ...

." He elaborated: "The way the term is used tends to be unstable, which makes sense for a genre that blends fiction and what may appear to be fact into an unstable compound. In the past, I've tried to make a distinction in my own use of the term between autobiographical fiction, autobiographical metafiction, and autofiction, arguing that in autofiction there tends to be emphasis on the narrator's or protagonist's or authorial alter ego's status as a writer or artist and that the book’s creation is inscribed in the book itself."

Notable authors

* Ayad Akhtar *

Vassilis Alexakis Vassilis Alexakis ( el, Βασίλης Αλεξάκης; 25 December 1943 – 11 January 2021) was a Greek- French writer and self-translator of numerous novels in Greek, his mother tongue, and French. Biography Alexakis, the son of actor Gi ...

Sherman Alexie Sherman Joseph Alexie Jr. (born October 7, 1966) is a Spokane- Coeur d'Alene-Native American novelist, short story writer, poet, screenwriter, and filmmaker. His writings draw on his experiences as an Indigenous American with ancestry from se ...

* Doireann Ní Ghríofa *

Christine Angot Christine Angot (born 7 February 1959) is a French novelist, playwright and screenwriter. Life Born Pierrette Marie-Clotilde Schwartz (Schwartz being her mother's name) in Châteauroux, Indre, she is perhaps best known for her 1999 novel ''L'I ...

* Hannah Baer * James Baldwin * Megan Boyle * Charles Bukowski * Aldo Busi *

Emmanuel Carrère Emmanuel Carrère (born 9 December 1957) is a French author, screenwriter and film director. Life Family Carrère was born into a wealthy family in the 16th arrondissement of Paris. His father, Louis Carrère d'Encausse, is a retired insuranc ...

* Louis-Ferdinand Céline * Durga Chew-Bose * J. M. Coetzee * Teju Cole *Barbara Comyns * Chloe Delaume * Marguerite Duras *

Andrew Durbin Andrew Durbin is an American poet, novelist, and editor. As of 2019, he has served as editor-in-chief of Frieze magazine. Prior to his position at Frieze, he co-founded Company Gallery, served as the Talks Curator at the Poetry Project, and serv ...

Guillaume Dustan Guillaume Dustan (November 28, 1965, Paris – October 3, 2005) was an openly gay French writer. Dustan's 1998 novel, ''In My Room'', brought the author instant notoriety for his masterful use of autofiction and depiction of gay glamour and ...

Annie Ernaux Annie Thérèse Blanche Ernaux (; born 1 September 1940) is a French writer, professor of literature and Nobel laureate. Her literary work, mostly autobiographical, maintains close links with sociology. Ernaux was awarded the 2022 Nobel Prize ...

* Alice Ferney *

Hervé Guibert Hervé Guibert (14 December 1955 – 27 December 1991) was a French writer and photographer. The author of numerous novels and autobiographical studies, he played a considerable role in changing French public attitudes to HIV/AIDS. He was a ...

* Elizabeth Hardwick *

Sven Hassel Sven Hassel was the pen name of the Danish-born Børge Willy Redsted Pedersen (19 April 1917 – 21 September 2012) known primarily for his novels focusing on stories of German combatants during World War II. In Denmark he used the pen name ''Sve ...

* Sheila Heti *

James Joyce James Augustine Aloysius Joyce (2 February 1882 – 13 January 1941) was an Irish novelist, poet, and literary critic. He contributed to the Modernism, modernist avant-garde movement and is regarded as one of the most influential and important ...

* Jack Kerouac *

* Chris Kraus * Ben Lerner * Tao Lin *

Patricia Lockwood Patricia Lockwood (born 27 April 1982) is an American poet, novelist, and essayist. Her 2021 debut novel, '' No One Is Talking About This,'' won the Dylan Thomas Prize. Her 2017 memoir '' Priestdaddy'' won the Thurber Prize for American Humor. H ...

Édouard Louis Édouard Louis (born Eddy Bellegueule; 30 October 1992) is a French writer. Biography Édouard Louis, born Eddy Bellegueule was born and raised in the town of Hallencourt in northern France, which is the setting of his first novel, the autob ...

* Curzio Malaparte *

Henry Miller Henry Valentine Miller (December 26, 1891 – June 7, 1980) was an American novelist. He broke with existing literary forms and developed a new type of semi- autobiographical novel that blended character study, social criticism, philosophical re ...

* Catherine Millet *

Eileen Myles Eileen Myles (born December 9, 1949) is a LAMBDA Literary Award-winning American poet and writer who has produced more than twenty volumes of poetry, fiction, non-fiction, libretti, plays, and performance pieces over the last three decades. No ...

Amélie Nothomb Baroness Fabienne Claire Nothomb (), better known by her pen name Amélie Nothomb (; born 13 August 1967),''État présent de la noblesse belge'', éditions of 1979, 1995 and 2010. Her birth is announced in n° 87, aout 1967, p. 340 of the ''Bull ...

* Emmelie Prophète * Marcel Proust * Olivia Rosenthal *

Philip Roth Philip Milton Roth (March 19, 1933 – May 22, 2018) was an American novelist and short story writer. Roth's fiction—often set in his birthplace of Newark, New Jersey—is known for its intensely autobiographical character, for philosophicall ...

* Emily Segal *

Natasha Stagg Natasha Stagg is a writer based in New York City. Early life and education Stagg grew up in Tucson, Arizona. She attended the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, where her writing won a Hopwood Award for nonfiction and the Roy W. Cowden Memori ...

* Hunter S. Thompson * Ocean Vuong * Anne Wiazemsky * Rachel Cusk

References

{{Reflist Narrative forms Autobiographies Docudramas

Notable authors

See also

References