Fiction Without Fiction: "The Impostor" by Javier Cercas
(Original Review, 2014-11-24)
“The Impostor” is the story of Enric Marco, a fake holocaust survivor from the Flossenbürg concentration camp and one time chairman of the French association Amicale de Mauthausen. Cercas labels it a "novel without fiction", presumably because literary awards for fiction are sexier than those for non-fiction. It’s been done before, as Cercas points out, referencing Truman Capote and Emmanuel Carrère (but not poor Norman Mailer). To be fair, it’s been done before by Cercas as well. Ever since the success of "Soldier of Salamis" rescued his faltering literary career back in 2002, Cercas has been grafting fiction to varying degrees onto real life characters and events.
If you're into stuff like this, you can read the full review.
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