Introduction: The Fiction of History and the History of Fiction

Abstract

The Portuguese writer often insisted upon the supremacy of fiction over all the other fields that use words in order to express (or validate) human existence. [...]even history turns out to be a creative transformation of the contingent world, proving that the entirety of reality is just a matter of perspective and that in the contemporary world there is no such thing as an ultimate truth. [...]once written, history (any history!) becomes, in a more or less obvious way, another fiction: after all, any objective fact is transformed by the historian's inherent subjectivity and altered through the process of selection (i.e. only the most significant events are thoroughly recorded, in order to enrich the final text - be it a historical document or not - with a logical organizing pattern). [...]many thanks to Ali Shehzad Zaidi, the editor of the journal, for his enduring friendship and frequent encouragement!) Jay and I had already worked together on various projects of this New York academic journal (and I'll resume to mention only two special issues that appeared since 2019, namely Latin American Fiction and Mirrors and Labyrinths in Literature) and I was glad to renew the experience, knowing Jay's extensive learning and his amazing ability to bring together different people and different views on world literature. All the authors included in this special issue meditated, directly or not, upon this relationship and tried to clarify the meanings of history and the importance of fiction in contemporary literature from their own point of view, thus offering our readers the possibility of a deeper understating of the world we live in and the challenges we have to face.