This volume is a comprehensive introduction to the field of life writing. What makes life writing so popular and important today is its interdisciplinarity and preoccupation with identity politics, crossing the disciplinary borders of literature, history, anthropology, sociology and psychology. The volume traces the history and evolution of the genre since antiquity and discusses its various forms such as autobiographies, biographies, diaries, interviews, digital narratives, popular ballads, as-told-to narratives and folk narratives transmitted through anecdotes or through institutional records, and non-literary forms such as biopics and documentaries. It also analyses the convergence of life writing with postcolonial studies, gender studies and memory studies.

Rajesh V. Nair is Associate Professor of English, School of Letters, Mahatma Gandhi University, Kerala.