Roman à clef

A novel that portrays real people and events through fictional characters and situations, with clues allowing them to be identified.

Fiction: Narrative writing that presents invented characters, events, or settings. The novel disguises real-life material within an invented narrative.
Primary Colors: A 1996 novel by Anonymous depicting a fictional presidential primary campaign modeled on Bill Clinton's 1992 campaign. Its fictional candidate and campaign figures invited identification with real political personalities.
French language: A Romance language that developed from spoken Latin and is spoken in France and many other regions. The phrase roman à clef is French and literally means “novel with a key.”
Biography: An account of a person's life written by someone else, based on evidence and presented as nonfiction. Unlike biography, a roman à clef uses fictional characters and situations to portray real lives.
Autobiographical novel: A novel that draws substantially on its author's life while reshaping events and people. Both forms transform lived experience, but a roman à clef adds clues identifying real counterparts.
The Devil Wears Prada: A 2003 novel by Lauren Weisberger about an assistant at a fashion magazine, widely associated with Vogue editor Anna Wintour. The recognizable workplace and character model made the novel a modern publishing example.
Seventeenth-century French literature: Literature produced in France during the seventeenth century, including influential works of prose fiction. The term and form are associated with French literary culture of this period.
Memoir: A nonfiction account of selected experiences from the author's life. Memoir identifies itself as life writing rather than encoding real people in a novel.
Thinly veiled character: A fictional character whose traits and circumstances closely identify a real person. Such characters provide the recognizable clues at the heart of the form.
The Sun Also Rises: Ernest Hemingway's 1926 novel about expatriates in postwar Europe, drawing on people and experiences from his circle. Its cast has often been read alongside Hemingway's real acquaintances and their lives.

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