Is History Fiction?

The relationship between history and fiction has always been a controversial one. Can we ever know that a historical narrative is giving us a true account of what actually happened? Provocative and fascinating, this book is an original and insightful examination of the ways in which history is - and might be - written. It traces History's doubleness and divided nature, beginning with its founding figures, Herodotus and Thucydides, right up to the key figures of historical reflection, such as Friedrich Nietzsche, Benedetto Croce, Walter Benjamin, Hannah Arendt, Michel Foucault and Hayden White. The authors explore the challenges posed by postmodernism to history and the literary conventions of most historical writing. In this second edition they bring their history of history up to the present in their study of the History Wars and new approaches to world history and environmental history.

Ann Curthoys is an honorary professor at the University of Sydney,
and was previously Manning Clark Professor of History at ANU.
She has written about many aspects of Australian history, and on
questions of historical theory and historical writing. In the 1980s she
co-edited two books on Australia's Cold War and another on Australian
history since 1945. More recently Ann has been working on
Paul Robeson's visit to Australia in 1960, exploring the connections
between Cold War politics and the changing nature of race relations
in Australian society. She is author of Freedom Ride: A freedom rider
remembers (2002); with John Docker, Is History Fiction? (2005); and
with Ann McGrath, How to Write History that People Want to Read
(2009).