Is History Fiction? by Ann Curthoys and John Docker

Book Description

Secondhand. Very good condition. Ex library copy with all external stickers removed. Plastic protective covering. Partial date due slip on inside page, now covered with blank ex libris bookplate sticker. Stamp on imprint page. Pages are sunned. Minor wear to book edges and corners.

The relationship between history and fiction has always been controversial. Can we ever know that a historical narrative is giving us a true account of what actually happened?

Provocative and fascinating, this book is an original and insightful examination of the ways in which history is and might be written. It traces History's doubleness and divided nature, beginning with its founding figures, Herodotus and Thucydides, right up to the key figures of historical reflection, such as Friedrich Nietzsche, Benedetto Croce, Walter Benjamin, Hannah Arendt, Michel Foucault and Hayden White.

The authors explore the challenges postmodernism poses to history and the literary conventions of most historical writing. In this second edition, they bring their history of history up to the present in their study of the History Wars and new approaches to world history and environmental history. (publisher blurb)