Nonfiction Novel

The nonfiction novel is a literary genre that recounts real historical figures and actual events using the narrative techniques of the novel, including scene construction and reconstructed dialogue, producing a form its own practitioners and critics describe as loosely defined and flexible. The genre is sometimes called faction, blending fact and fiction, and when its subject is the author's own life it shades into autofiction. Truman Capote's In Cold Blood, a 1965 account of the murder of the Clutter family built on years of research and interviews, is the genre's landmark work, though critics including Ben Yagoda have noted that some of its scenes, such as a graveyard conversation Capote himself acknowledged was invented, blur the line between reporting and invention that defines the genre's ongoing controversy.