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Truth and fiction

Judith Wright as historian
by
August 2006, no. 283

Truth and fiction

Judith Wright as historian
by
August 2006, no. 283

Early last year, Phillip Adams interviewed the British author Pat Barker on his radio programme, Late Night Live. Pat Barker is a novelist who has journeyed into history, most famously in her Regeneration trilogy about World War I, where she fictionalises real, historical individuals. Adams asked her: ‘Which is better at getting at the truth? Fiction or history?’ Her answer was: ‘Oh, fiction every time.’ Barker is a novelist for whom violence and the fear of violence has been a recurrent, powerful theme. She argued that fiction allowed her to ‘slow down’ the horror so that she and her readers could think about it as it happened. In real life she felt that violence was often so swift and shocking that all one could do was recoil. Fiction gave her freedoms that helped her to convey truth.

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Comment (1)

  • So relevant to me as a writer of fiction and creative non-fiction and the daughter of a self-made pastoralist from the Clarence River who never talked about the massacres that occurred nearby. Thanks so much for this article.
    Posted by Anne Skyvington
    17 February 2024

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