Derivative Lives: Biofiction, Uncertainty, and Speculative Risk in Contemporary Spanish Narrative

Description

The title of this book, Derivative Lives, alludes to the challenge of finding one’s way within the contemporary market of virtually limitless information and claims to veracity. Amid this profusion of options, it is easy to feel lost in spaces of uncertainty where biographical truth teeters between the real and the imaginative. The title thus also points to the prolific market of biographical novels that openly and intentionally play in the speculative space between the real and the fictional. Drawing on theories of risk and uncertainty, Derivative Lives considers the surge in biofiction in Spain and globally, relating literary expression to concepts such as circumstantiality, derivatives, speculation, and game studies. Cover Contents Acknowledgments Introduction: Derivative Lives: Biofiction, Uncertainty, and Speculative Risk in Contemporary Spanish Narrative Part One The Circumstantial Case: Chasing Criminals/Tracing Traumatic Histories 1 Making the Circumstantial Case: Reasonable Doubt and Moral Certainty in Javier Cercas’ Soldiers of Salamis 2 Fugitive Biofictions: Antonio Muñoz Molina’s Like a Fading Shadow and Gabriela Ybarra’s The Dinner Guest Part Two Speculative Truths and Derivative Fictions 3 Entertaining the What-Ifs in Rosa Montero’s The Madwoman of the House and The Ridiculous Idea of Never Seeing You Again 4 Fraudulent Pasts and Fictional Futures in Javier Cercas’ The Impostor and Adolfo García Ortega’s The Birthday Buyer Part Three Critical Play in Biofictional Games 5 Playing for Real: Simulated Games of Identity in Lucía Etxebarria’s Courtney and I and Truth Is Nothing but a Moment of Falsehood 6 Literary Afterlives and Paratextual Play: Elvira Navarro’s The Last Days of Adelaida García Morales and Antonio Orejudo’s The Famous Five and Me Coda: Biofiction’s Antidotes to Post-Truth Notes Bibliography Index