ABSTRACT
This chapter explores twenty-first century literary metafiction, its wide range of techniques and approaches, and its implications for the very act of reading. It describes the concept of metafiction, and explains the different ways in which the textual self-awareness of metafiction makes itself manifest in twenty-first century literature. The chapter examines the concept of historiographic metafiction, problematizing it and attempts to formulate a few notes for a revised taxonomy of twenty-first century metafictions. It also explores the connections between metafiction and postmodernism by way of the metafictional challenge to grand narratives. The chapter considers the privileged position from which metafiction navigate the contemporary world. Metafictive self-awareness and irony call upon the reader to question the construction of meaning, narrative, and truth. Metafiction is characterised by playful irony, but irony must not be misconstrued as cynicism nor in any way as being in opposition to sincerity.
