Autofiction as a Literary Genre: 6 Works of Autofiction

Autofiction, short for autobiographical fiction, is a genre of literature that combines elements of autobiography and fiction. In autofiction, details of the author’s life blend with fictional information, characters, and events. Autofiction often reads as like a published first-person account of the writer’s real life. The line between fiction and fact might not always be clear to the reader, leading to a sense of instability in the narrative. Autobiographical novels are novels that use elements of autofiction

Autofiction dates back to Ancient Greece, and its popularity continues to rise.

• First-person narratives: First-person narratives with an autobiographical component are nearly as old as literature itself. Some scholars credit “I,” a lyric poem by the Archaic Greek poet Sappho, as an early example of this type of text.
• In Search of Lost Time (1913-1927): Scholars consider this seven-volume work by the French novelist Marcel Proust an early version of autofiction. It involves many details and characters from Proust’s own life, although much else is fictionalized.
• Autofiction: The term “autofiction” first surfaced when the author Serge Doubrovsky used it to describe his 1977 novel Fils. Sleepless Nights (1979) by Elizabeth Hardwick and I Love Dick (1997) by Chris Kraus were instrumental in popularizing the genre and the use of the term in scholarship and book reviews.

The specific characteristics of autofiction are subject to interpretation, but some common features in autofiction works include:

1. 1. Life proximity: Beyond character names, the work will contain similarities between the author’s life and that of the protagonist. The most important one tends to be the role of writing in the protagonist’s life. Often, the protagonist is a professional writer. Some autofiction is a type of autobiographical metafiction, which focuses on the writing and storytelling process.
2. 2. Name sharing: Authors of autofiction will sometimes share the same name as the protagonist of the novel or short story.
3. 3. Uncertainty: Much of the tension in autofiction comes from uncertainty about what is real and what is fictional. Some details will be verifiable, but others may be difficult or impossible to determine by a reader, causing speculation.

Autofiction is a fairly popular genre, and there have been several recent examples of this blend of the real and the fictional:

1. 1. Every Day is for the Thief (2007): The first novel by Nigerian-American writer Teju Cole, this account of a young man’s journey to Nigeria has a diaristic form, reflecting Cole’s own journey to discover his roots.
2. 2. My Struggle (2009-2011): In this epic cycle of novels by Norwegian writer Karl Ove Knausgaard, the author tells the story of his own life. Knausgaard made up details to fill in the blanks of his recollection.
3. 3. How Should a Person Be? (2010): Canadian writer Sheila Heti constructed this work from interviews with various personal friends, offering a unique version of autofiction.
4. 4. The Outline Trilogy (2014-2018): Rachel Cusk, a British-Canadian writer, has worked in both fiction and essay form. Critics consider her trilogy of novels, Outline, Transit, and Kudos, to be autobiographical fiction. Unlike most autofiction, the narrator in this trilogy relays information about other characters and not much about herself.
5. 5. Motherhood (2018): This work of autofiction by Canadian writer Sheila Heti focuses on her struggles about deciding whether or not to have children.
6. 6. The Topeka School (2019): In Ben Lerner’s work of autofiction, the author describes experiences that closely mirror events from his own life, in scenes set in Kansas and then New York.

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