Autofiction is, in

literary criticism A genre of arts criticism, literary criticism or literary studies is the study, evaluation, and interpretation of literature. Modern literary criticism is often influenced by literary theory, which is the philosophical analysis of literature's ...

, a form of fictionalized autobiography.

Definition

In autofiction, an author may decide to recount their life in the third person, to modify significant details and characters, use invented 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 () is a literary genre that focuses on the psychological and moral growth and change of the protagonist from childhood to adulthood (coming of age). The term comes from the German words ('formation' or 'edu ...

as well as the New Narrative movement and has parallels with faction, a genre devised by

Truman Capote Truman Garcia Capote ( ; born Truman Streckfus Persons; September 30, 1924 – August 25, 1984) was an American novelist, screenwriter, playwright, and actor. Several of his short stories, novels, and plays have been praised as literary classics ...

to describe his work of narrative nonfiction '' In Cold Blood''. Serge Doubrovsky coined the term in 1977 with reference to his novel ''Fils''. However, autofiction arguably existed as a practice with ancient roots long before Doubrovsky coined the term. Michael Skafidas argues that the

first-person narrative A first-person narrative (also known as a first-person perspective, voice, point of view, etc.) is a mode of storytelling in which a storyteller recounts events from that storyteller's own personal point of view, using first-person grammar su ...

can be traced back to the confessional subtleties of

Sappho Sappho (; ''Sapphṓ'' ; Aeolic Greek ''Psápphō''; ) was an Ancient Greek poet from Eresos or Mytilene on the island of Lesbos. Sappho is known for her lyric poetry, written to be sung while accompanied by music. In ancient times, Sapph ...

's lyric "I." Philippe Vilain distinguishes autofiction from autobiographical novels in that autofiction requires a first-person narrative by a

protagonist A protagonist () is the main character of a story. The protagonist makes key decisions that affect the plot, primarily influencing the story and propelling it forward, and is often the character who faces the most significant obstacles. If a ...

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 an epistolary novel with autofiction elements by American artist and author Chris Kraus. It was published in 1997 by Semiotext(e). ''I Love Dick'' merges fiction and memoir formats to explore the writer's psycho-sexual o ...

'' have been deemed early seminal works popularizing the form of autofiction.

Uses

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

Tamil Tamil may refer to: People, culture and language * Tamils, an ethno-linguistic group native to India, Sri Lanka, and some other parts of Asia **Sri Lankan Tamils, Tamil people native to Sri Lanka ** Myanmar or Burmese Tamils, Tamil people of Ind ...

writer Charu Nivedita. His novel '' Zero Degree'' (1998), a groundbreaking work in Tamil literature, and his ''Marginal Man'' are examples of this genre. In

Urdu Urdu (; , , ) is an Indo-Aryan languages, Indo-Aryan language spoken chiefly in South Asia. It is the Languages of Pakistan, national language and ''lingua franca'' of Pakistan. In India, it is an Eighth Schedule to the Constitution of Indi ...

the fiction novels of Rahman Abbas are considered major work of autofiction, especially his two novels ''Nakhalistan Ki Talash'' (''In Search of an Oasis'') and ''Khuda Ke Saaye Mein Ankh Micholi'' (''Hide and Seek in the Shadow of God''). Japanese author

Hitomi Kanehara is a Japanese people, Japanese Japanese author, novelist. Her novel ''Hebi ni piasu'' (''Snakes and Earrings'') won the Shōsetsu Subaru Literary Prize and the Akutagawa Prize, and sold over a million copies in Japan. Her work has been translate ...

wrote a novel titled ''

Autofiction Autofiction is, in literary criticism, a form of fictionalized autobiography. Definition In autofiction, an author may decide to recount their life in the Third-person narrative, third person, to modify significant details and characters, use in ...

''. In a 2018 article for ''New York'' magazines website

Vulture A vulture is a bird of prey that scavenges on carrion. There are 23 extant species of vulture (including condors). Old World vultures include 16 living species native to Europe, Africa, and Asia; New World vultures are restricted to Nort ...

, 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 Tao Lin (; born July 2, 1983) is an American novelist, poet, essayist, short-story writer, and artist. He has published four novels, a novella, two books of poetry, a collection of short stories, and a memoir, as well as an extensive assortment o ...

, among others, as well as the multivolume epic ''My Struggle'' by the Norwegian Karl Ove Knausgaard." 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 Metafiction is a form of fiction that emphasizes its own narrative structure in a way that inherently reminds the audience that they are reading or viewing a fictional work. Metafiction is self-conscious about language, literary form, and story ...
, and autofiction, arguing that in autofiction there tends to be an 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

* Alan Wake * Aldo Busi *

Amélie Nothomb Baroness Fabienne Claire 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 ''Bulletin de l'association de la noblesse du royaume de ...

* Andrew Durbin * Anne Wiazemsky * Annie Ernaux *

Ayad Akhtar Ayad Akhtar (born October 28, 1970) is an American playwright, novelist, and screenwriter. He has received numerous accolades including the 2013 Pulitzer Prize for Drama as well as nominations for two Tony Awards. Akhtar is known as a playwrig ...

* Ben Lerner *

Bret Easton Ellis Bret Easton Ellis (born March 7, 1964) is an American author and screenwriter. Ellis was one of the literary Brat Pack (literary), Brat Pack and is a self-proclaimed satirist whose trademark technique as a writer is the expression of extreme acts ...

Catherine Millet Catherine Millet (; born 1 April 1948) is a French writer, art critic, curator, and founder and editor of the magazine ''Art Press'', which focuses on modern art and contemporary art. Biography Born in Bois-Colombes, France, she is best known ...

Charles Bukowski Henry Charles Bukowski ( ; born Heinrich Karl Bukowski, ; August 16, 1920 – March 9, 1994) was a German Americans, German-American poet, novelist, and short story writer. His writing was influenced by the social, cultural, and economic ambien ...

* Charu Nivedita * Chloe Delaume * Chris Kraus * Christine Angot * Christopher Isherwood * Curzio Malaparte * Dambudzo Marechera * Danielle Chelosky * Doireann Ní Ghríofa * Durga Chew-Bose * Édouard Louis * Eileen Myles * Elizabeth Hardwick * Emily Segal * Emmanuel Carrère * Emmelie Prophète *

Françoise Sagan Françoise Sagan (; born Françoise Delphine Quoirez; 21 June 1935 – 24 September 2004) was a French playwright, novelist, and screenwriter. Sagan was known for works with strong romantic themes involving wealthy and disillusioned bourgeois ch ...

* Fritz Zorn * Geoff Dyer * Guillaume Dustan * Henry Miller * Hervé Guibert * Hunter S. Thompson *

J. M. Coetzee John Maxwell Coetzee Order of Australia, AC Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, FRSL Order of Mapungubwe, OMG (born 9 February 1940) is a South African and Australian novelist, essayist, linguist, and translator. The recipient of the 2003 ...

Jack Kerouac Jean-Louis Lebris de Kérouac (; March 12, 1922 – October 21, 1969), known as Jack Kerouac, was an American novelist and poet who, alongside William S. Burroughs and Allen Ginsberg, was a pioneer of the Beat Generation. Of French-Canadian ...

* James Baldwin *

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

* Jennifer Croft * Karl Ove Knausgaard * Kate Zambreno * Lily Tuck * Louis-Ferdinand Céline * Lucia Berlin *

Marcel Proust Valentin Louis Georges Eugène Marcel Proust ( ; ; 10 July 1871 – 18 November 1922) was a French novelist, literary critic, and essayist who wrote the novel (in French – translated in English as ''Remembrance of Things Past'' and more r ...

Marguerite Duras Marguerite Germaine Marie Donnadieu (, 4 April 1914 – 3 March 1996), known as Marguerite Duras (), was a French novelist, playwright, screenwriter, essayist, and experimental filmmaker. Her script for the film ''Hiroshima mon amour'' (1959) ea ...

* Maria Stepanova * Megan Boyle *

Michel Houellebecq Michel Houellebecq (; born Michel Thomas on 26 February 1956) is a French author of novels, poems, and essays, as well as an occasional actor, filmmaker, and singer. His first book was a biographical essay on the horror writer H. P. Lovecraft. H ...

* Natasha Stagg * Ocean Vuong * Oksana Vasyakina * Olivia Rosenthal * Patricia Lockwood * Patrick Modiano * Philip Roth * Rachel Cusk * Sheila Heti *

Sherman Alexie Sherman Joseph Alexie Jr. (born October 7, 1966) is a Native American novelist, short story writer, poet, screenwriter, and filmmaker. His writings draw on his experiences as an Indigenous American with ancestry from several tribes. He grew up ...

* Sven Hassel *

* Teju Cole * Vanessa Springora * Vassilis Alexakis * Vladimir Oravsky * V.S. Naipaul * W.G. Sebald * William Keepers Maxwell Jr.

References

{{Reflist Narrative forms Autobiographies Docudramas

Definition

Uses

Notable authors

See also

References