In this book, Claire Boyle presents an account of the death of autobiography in the post-war era of French literature. She challenges assumptions that are sometimes made about why it is that writers are reluctant to be associated with the genre of autobiography.

Since 1975, French literary writing has been marked by an autobiographical turn which has seen authors increasingly often tap into the vein of what the French term, ecriture de soi. This coincides, paradoxically, with the 'death of autobiography', as these authors self-consciously distance themselves and their writings from conventional autobiography, founding a 'nouvelle autobiographie' where the very possibility of autobiographical expression is questioned. In the first book-length study in English to address this phenomenon, Claire Boyle sheds a new light on this hostility toward autobiography through a series of ground-breaking studies of estrangement in autobiographical works by major post-war authors Nathalie Sarraute, Georges Perec, Jean Genet and Helene Cixous. She identifies autobiography as a site of conflict between writer and reader, as authors struggle to assert the unknowableness of their identity in the face of a readership resolutely desiring privileged knowledge. Autobiography emerges as a deeply troubling genre for authors, with the reader as an antagonistic consumer of the autobiographical self.

Issue 56 delivers new work from Michelle Tea, Jose Antonio Vargas, T. C. Boyle, Dantiel W. Moniz, Genevieve Hudson, Jincy Willett, to name a few, and a section of staggering fiction from emerging Nigerian writers soon to be household names, with an introduction by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. There are botched home invasions and perception-heightening witchcraft, disillusioned mailmen and playlists for the comatose, posthumous visits from lovers and nail-biting prison breaks. And, if that weren't enough, this opulent hardcover issue also includes a captivating ten-page illustrated story by Rui Tenreiro that begins on the cover, and poems by Soviet-era absurdist Daniil Kharms, translated by Ilya Kaminsky and Katie Ferris. Time to cancel your plans-something more important has come up.