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nonfiction novel

noun

  1. a narrative dealing with real events and people, written in the form of a novel.


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Example Sentences

Like a nonfiction novel, Keefe’s book traces five decades of thorny history from the perspective of real-life characters, including the notorious Price sisters, Marian and Dolours, I.R.A. militants whose prison hunger strikes made front-page news in the 1970s, and Gerry Adams, the political leader who helped bring peace to Northern Ireland but has been accused of participating in atrocities committed during the height of the conflict.

The Maysles did film “A Visit With Truman Capote,” for public television, in which he is seen being interviewed by a Newsweek reporter, reading from his “nonfiction novel” “In Cold Blood” and showing Alvin Dewey, lead investigator on the murder case it recounts, and his wife around Manhattan.

The first three episodes of the 10-episode psychological thriller — based on Daniel Keyes’ 1981 nonfiction novel “The Minds of Billy Milligan” — are set to launch Friday, followed by installments of one episode per week.

American literary journalism is littered with problematic cases: Truman Capote’s true-crime “nonfiction novel” “In Cold Blood” had factual errors and invented scenes; Joe McGinniss’ “Fatal Vision” had its investigative shortcomings autopsied by Janet Malcolm and Errol Morris; John D’Agata’s reportage on Las Vegas, published as “About a Mountain,” sparked a battle between the author and his fact-checker so heated and wide-ranging that they wound up collaborating on an entire book about it, “The Lifespan of a Fact.”

Is this a fictionalized memoir or a “nonfiction novel” or something completely different?

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