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History, Memory, Fiction proposes an examination of several contemporary novels and memoirs of leading Pakistani and Kashmiri writers, considering them as historical fiction, in other words as works that are based on real-world facts, but as fiction are able to go further in creating what have been called 'possible worlds', ultimately creating a plausible story that might well be a true story. By blurring the frontier between history and fiction, unconstrained by concerns of referential 'truth', these novels and memoirs are able to provide us with fresh insights and moral orientation while suggesting that the past-which is not the same as history-must be given meaning in our present if we wish to create better possible futures. Thus, these writers are engaged in active social critique, providing readers with a broader perspective of historical consciousness.
About the author
David Waterman is currently Professor at the University of La Rochelle, France, where he is a member of the research team at the Center for Research in International and Atlantic History (CRHIA), Co-director of the doctoral program, Euclide and Director of the Asia Pacific Institute.
His publications include, Where Worlds Collide : Pakistani Fiction in the New Millennium (OUP, 2014), Pat Barker and the Mediation of Social Reality (2009), Identity in Doris Lessings Space Fiction (2006), Disordered Bodies and Disrupted Borders : Representations of Resistance in Modern British Literature (1999).
Summary
History, Memory, Fiction examines several contemporary novels and memoirs of leading Pakistani and Kashmiri writers, considering them as historical fiction, in other words as works that are based on real-world facts, but as fiction are able to go further, ultimately creating a plausible story that might well be a true story.
