Fact into Fiction

The contemporary novel leads a precarious life between conventional realism, nonfiction 'fiction, ' metafiction and fabulation. In this study an attempt is made to cut across these categories on the basis of the narrative device of 'documentary realism.' It is suggested that a distinctiveelement in contemporary fiction is the deliberate reliance on the documentary element, and the study looks at the way in which selected works by nine contemporary English-language novelists combine more of less clearly signalled documentary material with the imagined universes of fictional texts.