List of metafictional works

Metafiction is a form of fiction in which the text – either directly or through the characters within – is 'aware' that it is a form of fiction.

This is a partial list of works using various metafictional ideas.

Novels, novellas and short stories

See also: Category:Metafictional works

Pre-20th century works

• Jane Austen, Northanger Abbey
• Miguel de Cervantes, Don Quixote

Modern works

• Peter Ackroyd, English Music
• Richard Adams, The Plague Dogs
• Rabih Alameddine, I, the Divine
• Felipe Alfau, Locos: A Comedy of Gestures
• Martin Amis, Money, London Fields, Time's Arrow, The Information
• Isaac Asimov, Murder at the ABA
• Margaret Atwood, The Handmaid's Tale
• Paul Auster, The New York Trilogy: City of Glass (1985), Ghosts (1986) and The Locked Room (1986)
• Nicholson Baker, The Mezzanine
• John Barnes, One for the Morning Glory
• Julian Barnes, Flaubert's Parrot
• John Barth, Chimera, Coming Soon!!!, The Floating Opera, Lost in the Funhouse among others
• Peter S. Beagle, The Last Unicorn
• Samuel Beckett, Watt
• Thomas Bernhard, Wittgenstein's Nephew
• Jorge Luis Borges, "The Garden of Forking Paths", "Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius", "Pierre Menard, Author of the Quixote" among others
• William S. Burroughs, Naked Lunch
• Michel Butor, Second Thoughts
• Steven Brust and collaborators, the Paarfi books, especially Five Hundred Years After
• A. S. Byatt, Possession: A Romance
• James Branch Cabell, The Cream of the Jest
• Guillermo Cabrera Infante, Tres tristes tigres
• Italo Calvino, If on a winter's night a traveler
• Peter Carey, Illywhacker
• Jonathon Carroll, The Land of Laughs
• J. M. Coetzee, Slow Man
• Douglas Cooper, Amnesia, Delirium
• Julio Cortázar, Hopscotch
• Douglas Coupland, jPod
• John Crowley, Little, Big, "Novelty", Lord Byron's Novel, The Solitudes (first book of the Ægypt cycle)
• Mark Z. Danielewski, House of Leaves
• Peter David, Young Justice, Sir Apropos of Nothing
• Samuel R. Delany, The Einstein Intersection, Dhalgren, Return to Nevèrÿon (series)
• Philip K. Dick, VALIS, The Man in the High Castle
• Joan Didion, Democracy
• Umberto Eco, Foucault's Pendulum, The Island of the Day Before, The Name of the Rose
• Dave Eggers, A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius
• Bret Easton Ellis, Lunar Park
• Harlan Ellison, "The Deathbird"
• Michael Ende, The Neverending Story
• Steve Erickson, "Arc d'X", The Sea Came in at Midnight
• Raymond Federman, Twofold Vibration, Smiles on Washington Square, Take It Or Leave It
• Jasper Fforde, The Eyre Affair, Lost in a Good Book, The Well of Lost Plots, Something Rotten, The Big Over Easy, The Fourth Bear
• John Fowles, The French Lieutenant's Woman
• Jonathan Safran Foer, Everything Is Illuminated
• Cornelia Funke, Inkheart trilogy
• Jostein Gaarder, Sophie's World
• John Gardner, October Light, Grendel
• William H. Gass, The Tunnel
• André Gide, The Counterfeiters
• William Goldman, The Princess Bride
• Alasdair Gray, Lanark
• Robert Grudin, Book: A Novel
• Steven Hall, The Raw Shark Texts
• Larry Heinemann, Paco's Story
• Robert A. Heinlein, The Number of the Beast and Glory Road, at least.
• Douglas Hofstadter, dialogues in Gödel, Escher, Bach
• James Hogg, The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner
• Marek S. Huberath, Nest of Worlds (Gniazdo światów)
• Rhys Hughes, Nowhere Near Milk Wood, The Postmodern Mariner, The Less Lonely Planet
• B S Johnson, Christie Malry's Own Double-Entry
• Diana Wynne Jones, Fire and Hemlock
• Stephen King, The Dark Tower, Misery, The Dark Half, Bag of Bones
• Michael Muhammad Knight, Osama Van Halen
• Milan Kundera, The Book of Laughter and Forgetting
• Doris Lessing, The Golden Notebook
• Penelope Lively, Moon Tiger
• David Lodge, Therapy, Nice Work
• Dimitris Lyacos, Nyctivoe
• Steve Lyons, Doctor Who Virgin New Adventures:Conundrum
• Barry N. Malzberg, Galaxies, Herovit's World
• Yann Martell, Life of Pi
• Carole Maso, The Art Lover
• Ian McEwan, Atonement
• David Mitchell, Cloud Atlas
• Spike Milligan, Puckoon
• Walter Moers, The 13½ Lives of Captain Bluebear, Ensel und Kretel, The City of Dreaming Books
• Michael Moorcock, The Second Ether sequence (Blood, Fabulous Harbours & The War Amongst The Angels)
• Ethan Mordden, The Buddies Cycle
• Toni Morrison, Jazz
• Haruki Murakami, Kafka on the Shore
• Vladimir Nabokov, The Gift, Pale Fire, Look at the Harlequins!
• Flann O'Brien, At Swim-Two-Birds
• Michael Ondaatje, Running in the Family
• Juan Carlos Onetti, El Pozo
• Chuck Palahniuk, Fight Club, Diary, Haunted
• Kenneth Patchen, The Journal of Albion Moonlight
• Milorad Pavić's novels.
• Daniel Pellizzari, Dedo Negro Com Unha
• Arturo Pérez-Reverte, The Club Dumas
• Salvador Plascencia, The People of Paper
• Terry Pratchett, several of the Discworld, The Amazing Maurice and His Educated Rodents
• Robert Rankin's novels
• Alain Robbe-Grillet, La Jalousie, La maison de rendez-vous
• Philip Roth, Operation Shylock
• Salman Rushdie, Haroun and the Sea of Stories
• Douglas Rushkoff, Exit Strategy
• José Carlos Somoza, The Athenian Murders
• José Saramago, Blindness, The Cave, The Double
• Robert Sheckley, Options
• Iain Sinclair, Landor's Tower
• Dan Sleigh, Islands
• Lemony Snicket (Daniel Handler), A Series of Unfortunate Events (13 book series)
• Gilbert Sorrentino, Mulligan Stew
• Laurence Sterne, Tristram Shandy
• Peter Straub, In the Night Room
• Jonathan Stroud, The Bartimaeus Trilogy
• Janet Tashjian, The Gospel According to Larry and Vote for Larry
• J. R. R. Tolkien, Leaf by Niggle
• Roderick Townley, The Great Good Thing
• Miguel de Unamuno, Niebla
• Aritha Van Herk, Restlessness
• Jeff Vandermeer, City of Saints and Madmen
• Gore Vidal, Myra Breckinridge
• David Foster Wallace, Infinite Jest, Brief Interviews with Hideous Men The Broom of the System
• H. G. Wells, Tono-Bungay
• Colin Wilson, The Personality Surgeon
• Robert Anton Wilson and Robert Shea, the Illuminatus! trilogy
• Jeanette Winterson, Sexing the Cherry, The Powerbook, Gut Symmetries
• Gene Wolfe, The Fifth Head of Cerberus, The Book of the New Sun "The Last Thrilling Wonder Story" among others
• Virginia Woolf, Orlando: A Biography
• Ronald Wright, A Scientific Romance

Animated short films

• Chuck Jones, Duck Amuck (1953) and Rabbit Rampage (1955).

Stage plays

Pre-20th century works

• Francis Beaumont, The Knight of the Burning Pestle
• Thomas Kyd, The Spanish Tragedy
• William Shakespeare, Hamlet, A Midsummer Night's Dream

Modern works

• Samuel Beckett, Waiting for Godot and Endgame
• Federico García Lorca, Play Without a Title / Untitled Play (1935)
• Joseph Heller, We Bombed in New Haven
• Arthur L. Kopit, End of the World With Symposium to Follow
• Ira Levin, Deathtrap
• Dimitris Lyacos, Nyctivoe
• Daniel MacIvor, Never Swim Alone and This Is A Play
• Steve Martin, Picasso at the Lapin Agile
• Luigi Pirandello, Six Characters in Search of an Author
• Tom Stoppard, Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead
• Peter Weiss, Marat/Sade (The Persecution and Assassination of Jean-Paul Marat As Performed by the Inmates of the Asylum of Charenton Under the Direction of The Marquis de Sade)
• Thornton Wilder, The Skin of Our Teeth
• Doug Wright, I Am My Own Wife

Films

• Keith Allen and Peter Richardson's Comic Strip film Detectives on the Edge of a Nervous Breakdown
• Woody Allen's The Purple Rose of Cairo
• Robert Altman's The Player
• Steve Bendelack's The League of Gentlemen's Apocalypse
• Ingmar Bergman's Persona
• Wyllis Cooper's Quiet, Please scripts
• David Cronenberg's Videodrome, Naked Lunch and eXistenZ
• Federico Fellini's 8½
• David Fincher's Fight Club
• Marc Forster's Stranger Than Fiction
• Jean-Luc Godard's Breathless, and many of his other films of the 1960s
• Peter Greenaway's The Baby of Mâcon
• Kirt Gunn's Lovely By Surprise
• Michael Haneke's Funny Games
• Charlie Kaufman's screenplay for Adaptation
• Buster Keaton's Sherlock Jr.
• David Lynch's Inland Empire
• John McTiernan's Last Action Hero
• Roman Polanski's What?
• Robert Pulcini and Shari Springer Berman's American Splendor
• Tom Tykwer's Run Lola Run
• Michael Winterbottom's A Cock and Bull Story, a film adaptation of Laurence Sterne's Tristram Shandy

Television shows

• Arrested Development
• Drawn Together
• It's Garry Shandling's Show
• Princess Tutu
• Sean's Show
• The Simpsons
• South Park
• Boston Legal
• Red Dwarf: Back to Earth
• Supernatural, in the episodes "Hollywood Babylon", "The Monster at the End of this Book", "Lucifer Rising". "The Real Ghostbusters", "Swan Song" and "The French Mistake"
• 30 Rock
• Community
• Family Guy

Comic strips, comic books and graphic novels

• Berke Breathed, Bloom County
• Rich Burlew, The Order of the Stick.
• John Byrne's run on The Sensational She-Hulk and Dan Slott's run on She-Hulk.
• Alan Moore, Promethea, Supreme and The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen.
• Grant Morrison's runs on Animal Man and Doom Patrol, Flex Mentallo, The Filth, and more recently, Batman R.I.P. and Final Crisis. Elements of metafiction can be found in a great deal of Morrison's comics work. Metafictional aspects are especially prominent in The Invisibles, a series Morrison has described as a hypersigil designed to effect positive change in the reader's (and writer's) life.
• Ryukishi07, Umineko no Naku Koro ni, Umineko no Naku Koro ni Chiru
• Claudio Sanchez, Good Apollo, I'm Burning Star IV, Vol. 1, first half of the fourth chapter of The Amory Wars presents a metafictional aspect to the story when The Writing Writer goes into the story to persuade the main character to accept his destiny.
• Dave Sim, chapters "Minds" and "Guys" from his six thousand pages graphic novel Cerebus.
• Kristofer Straub, Checkerboard Nightmare, portrayed as the workplace of several professional webcomic actors and marketers.

No author

• The Marvel Comics supervillains Deadpool and Purple Man are both aware they are in a comic book.
• Penny Arcade frequently features metafiction, particularly their fantasy setting Epic Legends of the Hierarchs: The Elemenstor Saga, which has a detailed wiki devoted to it.
• The Ongoing Adventures of Rocket Llama is fiction with a metafictional history.
• Triangle and Robert is heavily metafictional.

Artists' books

• Space Opera: The Artist's Book by Michael J. Weller