History UnreliableNarrator / Literature

** In "The Cask of Amontillado", the narrator claims that he is getting revenge on his nemesis Fortunato for a monstrous insult. However, Fortunato seems to trust the narrator and thinks that they're friends. The narrator never specifies exactly what Fortunato did to him, leaving the question of Fortunato's exact fault (or even the existence thereof) open.

* ''Dom Casmurro'', from Creator/MachadoDeAssis, a most famous realist Brazilian writer, has an interesting case. For a long time it was considered that the protagonist, who's the narrator, was simply and clearly cheated on by his wife, and that he himself as a character was completely just in his actions. Only long after his death it has become common knowledge (among professional critics at least) that the fact is, not only is Dr. Bento, the protagonist, in possession of a failing memory (he commits many continuity errors, AND lets it slip a few times as he complains about his memory), but is also a lawyer (no further explanation needed, really... but) and he's paranoid. Those all add up for a really unreliable narrator who struggles to remember simple facts, sees things that aren't really there AND wants the reader's approval.

* ''Literature/TheNameOfTheWind'' by Patrick Rothfuss is written largely as a flashback told in the first-person perspective by the main character, Kvothe, and there are hints that it's not wholly reliable. One of Kvothe's companions remarks that a certain woman who shows up frequently in the story (and is the object of Kvothe's affection) wasn't as beautiful as described, among others. He actually says a character won't shows up, but uses ExactWords to lie.

* Played with in "Literature/ThePrincessBride", in which the author uses a false version of himself to provide background for his editing of the (nonexistent) original novel. Weirdly enough, though, especially in the introductions he periodically adds on for various anniversary editions (particularly about the movie), he will often reference real people and occasionally tell real anecdotes about them as well as real anecdotes about his life and then segue into an anecdote that, if you know that the book is wholly fictional, couldn't possibly have happened. Within the false original book, it is implied that the author, though he was purportedly writing a novel based on true events, did not quite know when to stick to the truth, when not, when to add in his whole long polemics about trees, etc. Especially in the 30th anniversary intro, when we learn that he was considering changing aspects of the story (and may have actually done so) in order to cater to what he and others wanted to hear, we question, even upon finding out that there is a museum with artifacts of the story, how much f it REALLY happened.

** It's also worth comparing different [=POVs=] of the same character: compare Catelyn's chapter with Jaime in ''A Clash of Kings'', where he comes off as an obnoxious, egotistical {{jerkass}}, and Jaime's own first chapter in ''A Storm of Swords'' where he becomes bitter, biting, and [[JerkassFacade well-aware of his own limits]]. Jon Snow has a similar disconnect; in his own chapters he reads like TheFettered, but from Samwell's POV he's an exhausted AntiHero. And then there's Stannis (whose head we've not got in as of yet), who from Catelyn's POV is a dour jerk, from Davos' POV is a WellIntentionedExtremist, and from Jon's POV is ToBeLawfulOrGood. When we see Littlefinger from Catelyn's perspective, we feel bad for him, in Ned's, he seems like a SmugSnake, and Tyrion consideres him a formidable foe, but it's not until Sansa meets him that it's clear how utterly ''[[{{Ephebophile}} slimy]]'' he is, and in another POV (Theon) are [[MoralEventHorizon the depths of depravity or rather it's victim]]. It should be interesting to see how other characters view Daenerys when they finally cross paths with her...

* The ''Dune Encyclopedia'' about the ''Literature/{{Dune}}'' series is a big example of this. It is framed as an Encyclopedia within the ''Dune'' universe, purportedly 5,000 years after the events of the first novel and after the historical record has been greatly altered or lost. Several of the entries either contradict or give a different perspective on the events of the novels. It is up to the reader to determine what account, if any, "really" happened. Particularly interesting is the brief chronological timeline linking "our" time to the setting in ''Dune''. The fictional authors of the Encyclopedia have an idea of what happened in their "distant past" ... but it's [[FutureImperfect heavily filtered]] through the experience of thousands of years of living in a feudal system of government. World War 2, for example, is referred to as a "commercial dispute between House Washington and House Tokyo" within a British Empire that supposedly ruled almost the entire world.

* Jennifer A. Nielsen's Ascendance Trilogy (especially The False Prince, the first novel) provides an example in which the narrator rarely actually lies, either to the readers or the other characters he interacts with, and on the occasions he does tell an outright lie often points it out in the narration. Instead, his unreliability comes from his tendency to tell only part of the truth so that it is easily misinterpreted or to tell the truth in a manner that makes other characters believe he is lying or being sarcastic. In the later two books he is more forward about things, but still will often let the reader believe what the general public believes about a situation until it comes time to reveal the more complete version of the truth.

* Sarah Caudwell's (very funny) four legal mysteries are narrated by Literature/HilaryTamar (of unknown gender). While the stories can be considered 'accurate' the narrator's roles and motivations are always given a very shiny gloss (I just happened to need a book in that room, and I just happened to need one that was low down behind the sofa. Oh no, now they've entered the room and started talking about the mystery without realising that I'm here).

** ''Literature/AndThenThereWereNone'': at one point, the actual murderer, [[spoiler: Judge Wargrave]], is described as being surprised when the person who wrote the letter inviting them to Indian Island isn't at the island to greet them -- and the narrator's little peek into the character's thoughts reveals (or seems to reveal) that the character's surprise is ''genuine''. (Since this books uses a third-person omniscient narration, this might be seen as cheating.)

* Agatha Christie:

* Henry James's novella ''Literature/TheTurnOfTheScrew'': Are the ghosts real or simply the narrator's imagination?

* Robert Bloch's classic short story "Yours Truly UsefulNotes/JackTheRipper" is a great example. Set in the modern day, the first-person narrator relates an incident in which a friend of his becomes convinced that Jack the Ripper killed all those women as part of an occult ceremony to attain immortality. He assists his friend in his investigations and helps him track suspects [[spoiler:but the big twist is that the narrator himself is Jack the Ripper, and while his friend's theory was correct, he had the wrong suspect. This is revealed in the final line of the story when the narrator, holding a knife, says, "Just call me... Jack!"]] Bloch never cheats - you can re-read the story knowing the ending, and it remains internally consistent, although it changes from an odd little comedy to a chilling thriller.

* Robert Bloch's classic short story "Yours Truly JackTheRipper" is a great example. Set in the modern day, the first-person narrator relates an incident in which a friend of his becomes convinced that Jack the Ripper killed all those women as part of an occult ceremony to attain immortality. He assists his friend in his investigations and helps him track suspects [[spoiler:but the big twist is that the narrator himself is Jack the Ripper, and while his friend's theory was correct, he had the wrong suspect. This is revealed in the final line of the story when the narrator, holding a knife, says, "Just call me... Jack!"]] Bloch never cheats - you can re-read the story knowing the ending, and it remains internally consistent, although it changes from an odd little comedy to a chilling thriller.

* One potential reading of ''Literature/RobinsonCrusoe'' is that the UnfortunateImplications of the Manservant Friday are the result of the unreliable narrator. This may just be the literary equivalent of WildMassGUessing, however.

* In the fourth book of ''Literature/GulliversTravels'' our protagonist tells us how wonderful and enlightened the horse creatures he met are, but reveals a number of facts about them with unfortunate implications. They are dispassionate and clinical, showing little affection towards their children (who are passed off to others who cannot conceive if this is more efficient), are repulsed by the concept of creativity (they believe words are only for conveying information) and have total disgust for the primitive, bestial Yahoos with which they share their land, and routinely discuss the possibility of exterminating them. They cast out Gulliver for his resemblance to the Yahoos but he remains totally in awe of them, cannot stand to even look at his family for the same reason and spends his time talking to horses. His total misanthropy at the end suggests he may not be a reliable commentator.
** It's explained that it's not that they don't feel any love for their children - they just love everyone ''as much as they love their own children'', so someone down the street is as dear to them as their new-born foal.
** Here the moral could be the need to strike a balance between excessive detachment (represented the horse-people) and primal emotions (represented by the Yahoos).
** Gulliver does something similar in book 2, where Gulliver's attitudes are used to satirise those prevalent in Swift's England.

* In ''Literature/TheMothDiaries'', the entire story revolves around the unnamed narrator not being reliable. You get to work it out for yourself, because you don't actually find out whether Ernessa is [[spoiler:a vampire or not]]. There are also some very interesting deaths in the plot, and it's fun to work out whether they happened and how much of it was psychosis.

* ''Literature/DamnatioMemoriae'' by Laura Marcelle Giebfried has Enim Lund narrating. Not only is it difficult to know if he's being entirely truthful because he's known to feel guilty about certain events involving his mother (and thus he 'remembers' them different ways), but [[spoiler:he is also diagnosed with schizophrenia at the end of the first novel]] making it difficult to know what really happened and what didn't. Still, the author makes it unclear as to whether he really is unreliable, or if he's reliable and no one believes him.

** Frodo in ''TheLordOfTheRings'' is somewhat of an UnreliableNarrator himself, or at least he has a few in-universe examples of BeamMeUpScotty:

* Hagar Shipley (formally Currie) from Margaret Laurence's "A Stone Angel" fits the bill in that she is a very proud, cynical woman. It can be very difficult to discern whether she is exaggerating about somebody or if the negative attributes she applies to someone is all in her head.

** Bartimaeus: Faquarl wasn't a sly old equivocator like Tchue; he prided himself on blunt speaking. Mind you, he did have a weakness for boasting. If you believed all his stories, you'd have thought him responsible for most of the world's major landmarks as well as being adviser and confidant to all the notable magicians. This, [[HypocrisyNod as I once remarked to Solomon]], was quite a ridiculous claim.

* In a children's book re-imagining of the "Literature/ThreeLittlePigs", the Wolf details how every instance was a mistake or misunderstanding. Still, the pictures with the text -- and the Wolf's shifty tone -- can lead even a small child to doubt the veracity of his claims that he is the victim. Specifically, there's the fact that he just "had" to eat the pigs when unfortunate (and completely not his fault) events killed them because "why waste them?" Granted, the Wolf is telling his side of the story. It is possible that the more traditional story was the lie.

* The Repairer of Reputations, a part of the ''Literature/TheKingInYellow'' features this. From the get-go, the narrator, Hired, mentions that he suffered a head injury that led him to be committed to an asylum before being released after a couple of years, but he then vehemently insist that he was unjustly detained and that he was never insane, meaning that his account of events is already untrustworthy from the beginning. And when end reveals that [[spoiler:he died in an asylum the previous day]], large portions of plot become extremely questionable. To top it off, he even fairly early reveals that he read the in-universe "The King In Yellow", which is a BrownNote that drives you insane.

* The Repairer of Reputations, a part of the ''Literature/TheKingInYellow'' features this. From the get-go, the narrator, Hired, mentions that he suffered a head injury that led him to be committed to an asylum before being released after a couple of years, but he then vehemently insist that he was unjustly detained and that he was never insane, meaning that his account of events is already untrustworthy from the beginning. And when end reveals that [[spoiler:he died in an asylum the previous day]], large portions of plot become extremely questionable. Especially given that fairly early on he reveals that he read the in-universe "The King In Yellow", which is a BrownNote that drives you insane.

* The Repairer of Reputations, a part of the ''Literature/TheKingInYellow'' features this, when it is discovered that [[spoiler:narrator died in an asylum the previous day]], large portions of plot become extremely questionable. Especially given that fairly early on he reveals that he read the in-universe "The King In Yellow", which is a BrownNote that drives you insane.