Autofiction is a genre of fiction which blends fiction with autobiography. It is distinguished from an autobiographical novel in the extent to which it is difficult for the reader to distinguish truth from fiction.
In many examples of autofiction, the author, the narrator and the protagonist share the same names and many other characteristics; the plot is based to a significant extent on the author's 'real' life. This implies that the narration is in the first person. Examples include the 'My Struggle' novel sequence of Karl Ove Knausgard, starting with A Death in the Family, and Americanitis by Miles Beard.
Autobiographical novels, on the other hand, although they have plots based, to a greater or lesser degree, on the real life of the author, separate author from protagonist. They may be in the first person, conflating narrator and protagonist, such as David Copperfield by Charles Dickens or the third person such as George Eliot's The Mill on the Floss where childhood and early adulthood of the principal character Maggie is clearly based on that of the author.
The term 'autofiction' was coined by Serge Doubrovsky to describe his novel Fils (1977) but there have been precursors such as the novel sequence In Search of Lost Time by Marcel Proust. The Goodbye to Berlin stories of Christopher Isherwood, although referring to the narrator/ protagonist in the third person as 'Christopher', might be considered to be early examples of autofiction.
The Netflix series Baby Reindeer might be considered a television equivalent of autofiction.
The blurring of fact and fiction in autofiction causes confusion and uncertainty as to what is 'real' and what isn't. This is similar to 'faction' (the term coined by Truman Capote to describe his book In Cold Blood). It seems to intrigue readers.
Examples of autofiction covered in this blog include:
- Stay With Me by Hanne Orstavik
- Climbers by M John Harrison
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