Truthful Fictions: Conversations with American Biographical Novelists

Download or read book Truthful Fictions: Conversations with American Biographical Novelists written by Michael Lackey and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 2014-02-27 with total page 366 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this new collection of interviews, some of America's most prominent novelists identify the key intellectual developments that led to the rise of the contemporary biographical novel, discuss the kind of historical 'truth' this novel communicates, indicate why this narrative form is superior to the traditional historical novel, and reflect on the ideas and characters central to their individual works. These interviews do more than just define an innovative genre of contemporary fiction. They provide a precise way of understanding the complicated relationship and pregnant tensions between contextualized thinking and historical representation, interdisciplinary studies and 'truth' production, and fictional reality and factual constructions. By focusing on classical and contemporary debates regarding the nature of the historical novel, this volume charts the forces that gave birth to a new incarnation of this genre.