Postmodern Fiction

Postmodern fiction is a literary genre characterized by metafiction, unreliable narration, self-reference and intertextuality, the practice of building upon or reimagining other works of literature, and it frequently engages historical and political themes. It emerged as a distinct experimental style in the United States during the 1960s through writers such as Kurt Vonnegut, Thomas Pynchon, William Gaddis, Philip K. Dick, Kathy Acker and John Barth, developing alongside the era's counterculture and often challenging established authority and the literary status quo. Its precursors include Miguel de Cervantes's Don Quixote, Laurence Sterne's Tristram Shandy and Thomas Carlyle's Sartor Resartus, works whose self-conscious narrative games anticipated the genre's later concerns. The style remained prominent into the twenty-first century in works such as Dave Eggers's A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius and Jennifer Egan's A Visit from the Goon Squad, which continued to develop postmodern fiction's characteristic self-reflexivity.