Author self-insertion

The Modern Novel home page » My Lists home page » Author self-insertion

Note that this concerns novels, plays and related works where the author has a character who has the same name as the author. It does not include autobiographical novels, the character-narrator, romans à clef, self-reference, metafiction, Breaking the fourth wall, author surrogates, autofiction or Mary Sues, unless there is a character with the same name as the author. Of course, as this is my list, there may be slight exceptions to this rule.

César Aira: Cómo me hice monja (How I Became a Nun)
Martin Amis: Money
Ara 13: Drawers & Booths
Isaac Asimov: Murder at the ABA
Paul Auster: City of Glass
Volker Braun: Hinze-Kunze-Roman [The Tom, Dick and Harry Novel]
Jonathan Coe: The Terrible Privacy of Maxwell Sim
J M Coetzee: Summertime
Clive Cussler: All books as from 1990
Phillip K. Dick: VALIS (under the thinly disguised name of Horselover Fat)
José Donayre: La descarnación del verbo
John Fowles: The French Lieutenant’s Woman
David Hare: Power of Yes
Michel Houellebecq: La carte et le territoire
Uwe Johnson: Jahrestage (Anniversaries)
Stephen King: The Dark Tower VI: Song of Susannah;The Dark Tower VII: The Dark Tower
Wyndham Lewis: Rotting Hill
W. Somerset Maugham: The Razor’s Edge
Nichola McAuliffe: A British Subject
William Nicholson: The Romantic Economist
Orhan Pamuk: Kar (Snow)
Orhan Pamuk: Masumiyet Müzesi (The Museum of Innocence)
Richard Powers: Galatea 2.2
Ishmael Reed: Japanese by Spring
Tom Robbins: Even Cowgirls Get the Blues
Philip Roth: The Facts
Kevin Rudd & Rhys Muldoon: Jasper & Abby and the Great Australia Day Kerfuffle
Vikram Seth: The Golden Gate
Dave Sim: Cerebus
Aleš Šteger: Odpusti (Absolution)
John Steinbeck: East of Eden
Kirmen Uribe: Bilbao-New York-Bilbao
Kurt Vonnegut: Slaughterhouse-Five
David Foster Wallace: The Pale King
Fay Weldon: Chalcot Crescent
Fay Weldon: Kehua!
Fay Weldon: Mantrapped
Dennis Wheatley: They Used Dark Forces

Other links

Fictional Novels Starring Non-Fictional Authors