A metafictional reflection on historiography : the inclusiveness of truth in Graeme Macrae Burnet’s "His Bloody Project"

This article analyses Graeme Macrae Burnet’s novel "His Bloody Project" (2015) as a metafictional exemplification of the problem of truth in historical accounts. Spuriously claiming that his novel contains authentic material related to a nineteenth-century crime, Burnet recounts the case in the form of a collection of miscellaneous texts. The novel may be read in the light of the stance upheld in postmodern historiography that there is no ultimate truth to be reached at the end of a historical enquiry. This analysis of "His Bloody Project" aims to demonstrate that the obscure, multifaceted truth about the murder case is constituted by all the diverse − even if incongruous and contradictory − perspectives presented in the book.