Historiographic Fiction or a Documentary Genre?

Abstract

In many novels of the 20th century, has been noticed a desire to rely on history in the form of meta-narratives, but at the same time to move away from history with the help of irony. This is mainly the nature of postmodernist works, which operate under the motto anything goes, everything is allowed. But in one of Kadare's works "Mornings in Rostand Coffee" can be noticed an attempt to build at the same time historiographical metafiction and a documentary novel about events that have left a mark on his memory. On one hand there are fragments of memories, reflections, findings, descriptions in the form of a macro text that connect the author's feelings, before and after the fall of communism in Albania. Different issues of the Albanian reality are thematised, where history and fiction are connected with each other. On the other hand, this work is also on the borders of a documentary novel, because the importance is on the true composition of the event and not the composition of the work, for being strongly connected from one chapter to the next. Our work is focused on trying to find connections between a historiographic fiction, documentary genre, autobiographic memory or how from one type it can be catapulted to another type easily. This is the technique of modernists and postmodernists who do not define the work in a single literary type. Through research, diffraction and analysis of the details of history and fiction, we intend to show that Kadare's work stands very well in an experimental novel, but also in a cycle of essays which connect the fate of the writer, his emotional feelings.

Received: 19 February 2024 / Accepted: 15 March 2024 / Published: 23 March 2024