ReadEdenAutobiography, memoir and autofiction: what does each form promise?
Three labels, three kinds of agreement
All three forms may use the author's life, but they do not make the same promise. An autobiography usually presents itself as an account of a life. A memoir narrows the frame to a period, relationship or experience. Autofiction keeps the author's biography in view while claiming the freedom of a novel.
The difference is not simply how much is true. It is also what kind of reading the book asks from us.
Autobiography: the shape of a whole life
Autobiography tends to organise a life retrospectively. The writer knows where the story leads and selects events that make that path visible. No life can fit into a book unchanged, so selection and memory still matter, even when factual accuracy is the stated aim.
Memoir: a smaller frame can reveal more
A memoir does not have to begin with birth or end in the present. It can stay with grief, work, childhood, illness or one relationship. The narrower promise often gives the writer more room to examine how an experience felt and how its meaning changed over time.
Autofiction: biography without a factual contract
Autofiction places recognisable material inside fiction. Names, places and events may resemble the writer's life, but the label warns us not to treat every sentence as testimony. The useful question is not which percentage is true. It is what the novel can do because it refuses to settle that question.