Autobiography : Fact and Fiction

Contents: Preface. 1. Introduction/Rosy Singh. 2. Autobiography, plural authorship and the death of the author/Alessandro Portelli. 3. Autobiographics of Dalit authors and the question of Dasha and Disha/Abhai Maurya. 4. Describing the Indian woman: New autobiographical ventures by Indian women writers in English/Suchitra Mathur. 5. Family Lexicon of Natalia Ginzburg: Re-living life in words/Sharmishta Lahiri. 6. Autobiographies of contemporary intellectuals: What to make of them/Remo Cesarani. 7. The "Stasi" as Eckermann: Reflections on Christa Wolf\'s post-wall autobiography What\'s Left/Manfred Stassen. 8. "As if I were in a novel...": Peter Esterhazy\'s Corrected Version/Margit Koves. 9. Mended holes of memory: The meaning of pictures in Elias Canetti\'s autobiography -- The Tongue Set Free, The Torch in My Ear, The Play of the Eyes/Carmen Ulrich. 10. At the border of autobiographical writing: Peter Handke\'s Report of a consciousness/Dorethea Jecht. 11. "It Ain\'t Me, Babe": Bob Dylan\'s Chronicles between concealment and disclosure/Dirk Wiemann. 12. Theory as autobiography: Music and childhood reminiscences as autobiographical elements in the works of Theodor W. Adorno/Romit Roy. 13. Kafka\'s letters to Felice Bauer: A lover\'s discourse/Rosy Singh. 14. The text as a renewed self-portrait: Giorgio De Chirico\'s Memories of My Life, Hebdomeros, Mr. Dudron/Patrizia Raveggi. 15. Autobiographical paradox of Alberto Savinio/Sanja Roic. 16. Lyrical autobiography: Life, death and self in lyrical poetry of Heiner Muller and Thomas Kling/Swantje Lichtenstein. 17. Autobiography as critique: De man and the realists/Kathleen Kerr-Koch. 18. The "I", "Tibuta" and the "Black Witch" in Maryse Conde\'s postcolonial-feminist-fictional-auto/Biographical song/Amy Wai-Sum Lee. Contributors.

"Autobiography : Fact and Fiction is a collection of essays on the nature of autobiographical discourse, its multiple semiotic structures and the complexities and the contradictions inherent in it. The book has deliberations on the classical autobiographical narrative and also new trends and practices emerging in this genre in the contemporary world -- in the East and the West, in the oral and written traditions as well as verbal and visual arts." (jacket)