This book challenges the established critical accounts of hybrid narratives, using the works of prominent Italian authors of both fiction and nonfiction to examine how literature and history have influenced each other in terms of style, content, and ambition.

In a world where facts and reality are constantly manipulated, blurring the boundaries between fictional and historical writing raises problematic aesthetical, ethical, and political questions. The book focuses on contemporary (1980-present) historical novels by Umberto Eco and the Italian writing collective Wu Ming, as well as on the essays by the historian Carlo Ginzburg. Through these three globally influential cases, the study offers new insight into the long-standing relationship between literature and history, marked by both conflict and productive exchanges. Through different means and modes of writing, these authors closely explore the practical and theoretical issues concerning historical accuracy, reconstruction, and retelling. Be it fiction or non-fiction, their works challenge the boundaries of genre and influence further disciplines and writing across borders. The book analyses in detail how Eco's novels provide an oblique commentary on his own theory, the connections and fundamental points of divergence between the approaches adopted by Eco and Ginzburg, how Wu Ming inherit their legacy while devising their own distinctly political way of writing about history, and how Ginzburg's essays influence contemporary fiction on a transnational scale.