True Lies is a comprehensive study of the evolving functions of narrative self-consciousness in contemporary Spain. While the foundational studies of metafiction - by Alter, Scholes, Hutcheon, Waugh, Spires, and the others - have illustrated how self-conscious writing serves to blur the distinction between reality and fiction in order to draw attention to the dynamic processes of literary representation, True Lies takes into account a fundamental issue overlooked by earlier treatments of the genre: namely, the importance of consciousness itself to this type of fiction. In the contemporary Spanish cultural context, novelists have increasingly explored the role of narrative in the construction and understanding of the self. This books shows how recent novels by Rosa Montero, Nuria Amat, Javier Cercas, Juan Jose Millas, Javier Marias, and Carlos Caneque use metafiction in order to question the relationship between reality and make-believe, to scrutinize the dynamic nature of personal identity; to problematize the historiographical enterprise; to evaluate critically the process of canon formation; and to parody themselves and the poetics of self-consciousness.

About the Author
Samuel Amago teaches at the University of Notre Dame, where he is an assistant professor in the program of Iberian and Latin American Studies and a faculty fellow of the Nanovic Institute for European Studies.

Reviews
'Amago . . . is intent to impress on us how an age-old form has taken on new life in the contemporary field. To a large extent, this is down to Amago's intelligent re-location of the debates concerning metafiction, drawing them closer to the questions of identity that characterize Spanish post-Franco culture. True Lies is an engaging and insightful contribution to the study of contemporary Spanish letters.' -- Stuart Davis, Girton College * Bulletin of Spanish Studies, Vol. 87, No. 1, 2010 *
'Amago shows that he is a skilled and disciplined reader with an eye for narrative complexities and thematic intensity. His study of the anxiety of influence in Nuria Amat's Todos somos Kafka and La intimidad is particularly well wrought, as is his exploration of indeterminacy and referentiality in [Javier] Maria's Negra espalda del tiempo.'''' -- David K. Herzberger * Revista Iberoamericana, March 2008 *
'Amago shows that he is a skilled and disciplined reader with an eye for narrative complexities and thematic intensity. His study of the anxiety of influence in Nuria Amat's Todos somos Kafka and La intimidad is particularly well wrought, as is his exploration of indeterminacy and referentiality in [Javier] Maria's Negra espalda del tiempo.' -- David K. Herzberger * Revista Iberoamericana, March 2008 *



Book Information
ISBN 9781611482669
Author Samuel Amago
Format Hardback
Page Count 215
Imprint Bucknell University Press
Publisher Bucknell University Press
Weight(grams) 490g
Dimensions(mm) 249mm * 167mm * 17mm