# What is an unreliable narrator? Canonical: https://zestasy.com/wiki/unreliable-narrator/ Section: Zestasy Wiki > Books & ideas · Updated: 2026-10-14 · Publisher: Zestasy *Zestasy Wiki: our reference answers. Checked for facts and sources; less curated than the magazine.* An unreliable narrator is a storyteller whose account you cannot fully trust, because they are lying, mistaken, self-deceiving or simply too naive to understand what they describe. The term was coined by the critic Wayne C. Booth in 1961. Spotting one is part of the fun: watch for contradictions, gaps and moments where other characters see things differently. Every first-person story asks you to take someone's word for it. Most of the time you do, without noticing. An unreliable narrator is a writer's way of making you notice: the story you are being told and the story that is actually happening slowly come apart, and the gap between them is where the novel lives. ## Where the term comes from The critic Wayne C. Booth introduced the phrase in *The Rhetoric of Fiction* (1961). For Booth, a narrator is unreliable when they do not act or speak in line with the values of the work as a whole, [as Wikipedia explains](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unreliable_narrator). In plainer words: the author is quietly signalling to you, over the narrator's head, that something is off. Unreliability is most common in first-person narration. It can be obvious from the first page, revealed as a twist near the end, or only hinted at, leaving you to decide how far to trust the voice. ## Kinds of unreliable narrator Narrators can be unreliable for very different reasons: - **The liar.** They know the truth and hide it, from other characters or from you. - **The self-deceiver.** They are not lying to you so much as to themselves. - **The naive narrator.** A child, an innocent or an outsider who reports accurately but does not understand what they see. - **The confused or troubled narrator.** Their perception itself is distorted. The critic William Riggan proposed a well-known classification in 1981 with four types: the picaro, the clown, the madman and the naïf, the same Wikipedia article notes. Huckleberry Finn is a classic naïf. ## Three famous examples **The Good Soldier, Ford Madox Ford (1915).** Narrated by John Dowell, an American who tells the story of two couples' friendship in a rambling, out-of-order way. Readers are left to judge whether he is a gullible observer or something more calculating, [per Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Good_Soldier). Nine years of apparently normal friendship turn out to be nothing of the sort. **The Murder of Roger Ackroyd, Agatha Christie (1926).** A Hercule Poirot mystery whose twist ending, which involves the narrator, had a lasting impact on the detective genre. In 2013 the Crime Writers' Association voted it the best crime novel ever, [according to Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Murder_of_Roger_Ackroyd). If you have somehow avoided the spoiler, guard it carefully. **The Remains of the Day, Kazuo Ishiguro (1989).** Stevens, an English butler on a motoring trip in 1956, looks back on his years of service. Critics have argued that he describes events accurately but interprets them in self-serving ways, [as Wikipedia summarises](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Remains_of_the_Day). It won the Booker Prize, and it is the gentlest, saddest kind of unreliability: a man who cannot afford to see his own life clearly. ## How to spot one The literary scholar Ansgar Nünning grouped the clues into three kinds, according to the same Wikipedia article: - **Inside the text:** the narrator contradicts themselves, has gaps in memory, or lies to other characters. - **Against the world:** what they say conflicts with general knowledge or plain logic. - **From your reading:** you recognise a type, the boastful hero, the too-innocent child, from other books. In practice, watch for: - **Other characters' reactions** that don't match the narrator's version. - **Over-insistence.** A narrator who keeps telling you how calm, fair or honest they are. - **Missing scenes,** jumps and things conspicuously not said. - **Your own unease.** If something feels slightly wrong, it often is. ## Why writers use it Because it makes you an active reader. Instead of being told what to think, you are weighing evidence, reading between lines and, often, changing your mind halfway through. It also mirrors real life: nobody tells their own story with perfect objectivity. That is why these books make such good [book club picks](https://zestasy.com/wiki/good-book-club-picks/): everyone reads the gap differently. ## FAQ ### Is every first-person narrator unreliable? In a sense, every narrator is limited. But the term is kept for cases where the book deliberately makes you doubt the account. ### Can a third-person narrator be unreliable? Some critics argue it can, especially in film and television, but the clearest examples are first-person. ### Is it a modern technique? The name is modern, from 1961, but our examples above all predate it, and the idea is surely as old as storytelling. ### Where should I start? The Remains of the Day: beautifully written and quietly devastating, with no trick ending to spoil. ## Sources - [Wikipedia: Unreliable narrator](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unreliable_narrator) - [Wikipedia: The Good Soldier](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Good_Soldier) - [Wikipedia: The Murder of Roger Ackroyd](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Murder_of_Roger_Ackroyd) - [Wikipedia: The Remains of the Day](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Remains_of_the_Day) ## Related - [What is the difference between literary fiction and genre fiction?](https://zestasy.com/wiki/literary-vs-genre-fiction/) - [Is If on a Winter's Night a Traveller confusing?](https://zestasy.com/wiki/if-on-a-winters-night/) - [What is the Booker Prize, and are the winners good reads?](https://zestasy.com/wiki/booker-prize/) - [Why is The Talented Mr Ripley set in Italy?](https://zestasy.com/wiki/the-talented-mr-ripley/) - [What makes a good book club pick?](https://zestasy.com/wiki/good-book-club-picks/) - [All Books & ideas answers in the Wiki](https://zestasy.com/wiki/#books)