Genre established The genre goes back at least as far as
André Breton's
Nadja (1928) and several books by the Czech writer
Vítězslav Nezval, such as
Ulice Git-le-coeur (1936). One of the early English books in the genre is
Rebecca West's
Black Lamb and Grey Falcon (1941). Jim Bishop's
The Glass Crutch (1945) was advertised as "one of the most unusual best-sellers ever published—a non-fiction novel." Perhaps the most influential non-fiction novel of the 20th century was
John Hersey's
Hiroshima (1946). Scholar David Schmid writes that "many American writers during the post-World War II period, including
Joan Didion,
Truman Capote, and
Norman Mailer, [chose] to follow Hersey’s lead." In
The New York Times,
Herbert Mitgang referred to
Paul Goodman's
Making Do (1963) as falling into "the category [that] is that growing one which might be called the nonfiction novel." The next year, he applied the term to
Leon Uris's
Armageddon (1964). Early influences on the genre can be traced to books such as
Ka-tzetnik 135633's (Yehiel Dinur) novellas
Salamdra (1946) and
House of Dolls (1953),
Carlos Bulosan's
America Is in the Heart (1946), and
John Dos Passos's
USA trilogy (1930–36).
House of Dolls describes the journey of the young Daniella Parleshnik during the
Holocaust, as she becomes part of the "
Joy Division," a
Nazi system keeping Jewish women as sex slaves in concentration camps. The book's plot was inspired by the Dinur's experience from the Holocaust and his younger sister, who did not survive the Holocaust. Works of
history or
biography have often used the narrative devices of fiction to depict real-world events. Scholars have suggested that the novel
Operación Masacre (1957) by the
Argentine author and journalist
Rodolfo Walsh was the first non-fiction novel in Spanish.
Walsh's Operación Masacre ("Operation Massacre") Rodolfo Walsh's
Operación Masacre (1957) details the
José León Suárez massacre, These events followed a 1955 military
coup, self-titled as “
Revolución Libertadora” (“The Liberating Revolution”), In his review of the book in
The American Scholar, Robert Langbaum wrote, "Once we look at structure, we find many nonfiction works as artful and sometimes more artful than many novels. Northrop Frye has, in his influential
Anatomy of Criticism, gone so far as to apply the word
fiction to any 'work of art in prose.' ... By taking [Capote] at his word and comparing his book to a novel, we can both appreciate his achievement and see its limits. For its best effects are novelistic and it falls short just where it is not novelistic enough."
Other 20th-century examples Other examples of the form are: •
Wild Colonial Boys (1948) by
Frank Clune, covering Australian bushrangers of the 19th century. •
The Crucible (1953) by
Arthur Miller, covering the
Salem witch trials of 17th century. •
The Armies of the Night (1968), by
Norman Mailer, a narrative which is split into a history and a novel, about the 1967
March on the Pentagon; and ''
The Executioner's Song'' (1979). •
Roots: The Saga of an American Family (1976) by
Alex Haley, which relates the story of the author and his family history for nine generations •
Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil (1994) by
John Berendt •
According to Queeney (2001) by
Beryl Bainbridge, which describes the last few years of
Samuel Johnson's life as seen through the eyes of
Queeney Thrale. •
Dispatches (1977), by
Michael Herr which reflects on the journalist's reporting from Vietnam. •
The Day of the Jackal (1971) by
Frederick Forsyth describes the attempt by the
OAS to assassinate
Charles de Gaulle, who they believe is a traitor to France after he declares independence to Algeria. Although the opening depiction of the assassination attempt as planned by Bastien-Thiry is true, the subsequent plot is totally fictional.
Tom Wolfe's
The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test (1968) was an example of the school of
New Journalism (often characterized as an invention of the mid-1960s). The novel is hybridized with journalistic narration, which, like Capote's prose, places little emphasis on the process of narration (although Wolfe, unlike Capote, occasionally narrates from first-person).
Hunter S. Thompson's approach of "
Gonzo Journalism" (in books like ''
Hell's Angels'' (1966)) abandoned Capote's narrative style to intermingle personal experiences and observations with more traditional journalism.
Reduced usage Since the 1970s, the non-fiction novel has somewhat fallen out of favor. However, forms such as the extended
essay, the
memoir, and the biography (and
autobiography), as well as
autofiction, can explore similar territory.
Joan Didion, for instance, has never called her own work a "non-fiction novel", while she has been repeatedly credited with writing them; however, she called them "extended" or "long" essays.
Late 20th Century works A Tomb for Boris Davidovich (Serbo-Croatian:
Grobnica za Borisa Davidoviča / Гробница за Бориса Давидовича) is a collection of seven short stories by Danilo Kiš published in 1976 (and translated into English by Duska Mikic-Mitchell in 1978). The stories are based on historical events and deal with themes of political deception, betrayal, and murder in Eastern Europe during the first half of the 20th century (except for "Dogs and Books", which takes place in 14th century France). Several of the stories are written as fictional biographies wherein the main characters interact with historical figures. The Dalkey Archive Press edition includes an introduction by Joseph Brodsky and an afterword by William T. Vollmann.
Harold Bloom includes
A Tomb for Boris Davidovich in his list of canonical works of the period he names the Chaotic Age (1900–present) in The Western Canon. The book is featured in Penguin's series "Writers from the Other Europe" from the 1970s, edited by
Philip Roth. Later works classified as non-fiction novels include
The Mystery of Beautiful Nell Cropsey: A Nonfiction Novel (1993) by Bland Simpson, which tells the dramatic story of the disappearance of 19-year-old Nell Cropsey from her riverside home in Elizabeth City, North Carolina, in November 1901;
In the Time of the Butterflies (1995) by
Julia Alvarez, which fictionalizes the lives of the
Mirabal sisters who gave their lives fighting a dictatorship in the
Dominican Republic, based on their accounts; and
A Civil Action (1996) by Jonathan Harr, which describes the drama caused by a real-life water contamination scandal in Massachusetts in the 1980s.
Homer Hickam, author of
Rocket Boys (1998) and other well-known memoirs, has described his work as novel-memoirs or "novoirs", wherein he uses novelistic techniques, including fictional conversations, to allow the essential truth of his stories to be revealed. == See also ==