Derivative Lives: Biofiction, Uncertainty, and Speculative Risk in Contemporary Spanish Narrative [Paperback]

The title of this book,Derivative Lives, alludes to the challenge of finding one's way within the contemporary market of virtually limitless information and claims to veracity. Amid this profusion of options, it is easy to feel lost in spaces of uncertainty where biographical truth teeters between the real and the imaginative. The title thus also points to the prolific market of biographical novels that openly and intentionally play in the speculative space between the real and the fictional.

Drawing on theories of risk and uncertainty,Derivative Livesconsiders the surge in biofiction in Spain and globally, relating literary expression to concepts such as circumstantiality, derivatives, speculation, and game studies.

Derivative Livesis undoubtedly a very interesting approach to the phenomenon of biofiction in Spain in the last two decades. The reader ignorant of Spanish culture will find fine analyses of well-chosen texts, by canonical authors or not, that dwell on the creation of other lives, other possibilities, personal or not, and that serve to discuss the uses of post-truth, truth, fiction and reality, all concepts that the supposedly moribund postmodernism has put back on the table, in a context different from the one that saw its birth. The book is very well organized, has a generous and accurate use of an abundant bibliography, the notes are numerous and pertinent, in an ambitious work on the diverse possibilities of biofiction. Life Writing

A brillC·