History Meets Fiction

<p>Is history factual or just another form of fiction?</p><p>Are there distinct boundaries between the two or just extensive borderlands?</p><p>How do novelists represent historians and history?</p><p>The relationship between history and fiction has always been contentious and sometimes turbulent not least because the two have traditionally been seen as mutually exclusive opposites.</p><p>However new hybrid forms of writing – from historical fiction to docudramas to fictionalised biographies – have led to the blurring of boundaries and given rise to the claim that history itself is just another form of fiction.</p><p>In his thought-provoking new book Beverley Southgate untangles this knotty relationship setting his discussion in a broad historical and philosophical context. Throughout Southgate invokes a variety of writers to illuminate his arguments from Dickens and Proust through Virginia Woolf and Daphne du Maurier to such contemporary novelists as Tim O’Brien Penelope Lively and Graham Swift.</p><p>Anyone interested in the many meeting points between history and fiction will find this an engaging accessible and stimulating read. </p>