Chapter 14 Autofiction and Its (Involuntary) Protagonists: A Comparison of Autofictional Novels by Mario Vargas Llosa, Javier Cercas, Karl Ove Knausgård, and Navid Kermani
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Abstract
It is no mere coincidence that, following the proclaimed death of the author in the 1960s, the postmodern author in fact rose up again, more active than ever before. In autofictional texts they are now the main protagonist of their own novels. It has been argued that – just as temporal distance increasingly moves real events into the proximity of fiction – personal and physical distance can also have an impact on a work’s reception. People closer to the narrated story are more likely to react to the printed version of their life-experiences. This reaction could be used as an indicator of reality in a fictional text. Taking examples from the reactions (or non-reactions) of the persons described in novels by Mario Vargas Llosa, Javier Cercas, Karl Ove Knausgård, and Navid Kermani, I argue that every reception of these texts demands an active form of reading, which engages with the ambiguity of autofictional novels.