num_pages: 96
description: The narrator of this novel begins by introducing himself not as a speaker but a listener spellbound by his friend Caracala's yarns which blend accounts of youthful mischief with casual references to Cervantes and Laurence Sterne. At first the spotlight is entirely on Caracala but the narrator soon begins to distrust his friend concluding that Caracala is no more than a sham: a performer. Yet the reader will in turn come to doubt the narrator's own pretensions to honesty until every source of information has become so unreliable as to make the very notion of a true story seem like blatant propaganda.
language: English
title: The Dance of a Sham
publisher: Dalkey Archive Press