History AnachronicOrder / Literature

** Creator/SamuelRDelany's short novel ''Literature/EmpireStar'' (1966) uses/abuses this trope to an amazing degree. The story involves several different time travelers, and, while it follows one character, at the end, you realize that there is no "proper" order for the whole story. Any ordering would have been arbitrary, and you have to put the events together for yourself.
** Speaking of Delany... his novel ''Literature/{{Dhalgren}}'' just might be a Moebius strip. The first and last words in the novel form a grammatically correct sentence if you assume the proofreader got the pages out of order.

* Taken as a whole, all ''Franchise/{{Warhammer}}'' novels are this, as there have been authors writing about the Horus Heresy (M30s), the War of the Beast (M32), the Sabbat Worlds Crusade (400s.M42) and various wars of the "modern" era (900s.M42-M43), among others, at the same time, as the Imperium's extremely long history and large size means that people can add a story in almost anywhere or anywhen in the timeline they like without having much impact on the big picture.

* ''Literature/TheChroniclesOfNarnia'' are each linear stories (except ''Literature/PrinceCaspian''), but are written in non-chronological order (books 1-4 are followed by an interquel set during book 1, when the Pevensies ruled Narnia, and a prequel, set before Narnia ever existed, before book 7 jumps back to the normal order) and many fans insist they can only be appreciated that way because of the setup and payoffs; for instance, there are frequently allusions to past and future events that happened from earlier to later books, and ''Literature/TheMagiciansNephew'', the second-to-last, is a {{prequel}}. Huge gaps of NarniaTime transpire between each and every book.

* * ''Literature/CloudCuckooLand'' has its story told across five different time settings.

* ''Literature/AllTheLightWeCannotSee'': For most of the novel, the narrative flashes between the Battle of Saint-Malo in 1944 and the events leading up to it.
* ''Literature/AnthologiesOfUllord'': Nikki Flynn & Edwin Dantes model their writing after this trope. Their various stories spoil events from other stories since there are a lot of crossover stories and characters making cameo appearances. These cameo appearances are used as a {{Continuity Nod}} and in a {{Connected All Along}} way. You can pick up reading any series or umbrella of their works (so long as you take book 1 in the series first) and experience this trope.

* Joseph Heller uses this extensively in the novel ''Literature/CatchTwentyTwo''. There was never an official time line and any made by someone else would have taken lots of work and still wouldn't have been accurate. Heller reportedly tried to make a time line after he had written the book "to make sure everything was in order" and found he had made a significant contradiction at one point, but decided to leave it in since fixing it would be a hassle, nobody would notice it unless they tried to create a time line for everything, and "it added a little something".

** ''Literature/{{Hexwood}}'' starts off by telling the very beginning and part of the very end of the story. Then it jumps right to the beginning... [[spoiler: which we find out later was AllJustADream, after being shown the ''real'' beginning of the story about halfway through.]] We are also informed that events [[spoiler:have been run through a few times just to get what the ending the RealityWarper desires, and it is actually implied that the rest of the characters are themselves experiencing things in anachronic order for a good part of the novel.]]

* Creator/RudyardKipling does this in ''Literature/TheJungleBook''. "Kaa's Hunting" (second story in ''The Jungle Book'') takes place between the first and second halves of "Mowgli's Brothers" (the first story). The third story, "Tiger! Tiger!" picks up from the end of "Mowgli's Brothers", and the remaining stories in the book are unconnected. In ''The Second Jungle Book'' the first story "How Fear Came" seems to take place after "Kaa's Hunting" and before the end of "Mowgli's Brothers" from the first book. The remaining Mowgli stories follow on chronologically from the end of "Tiger! Tiger!", but all except the last two are sandwiched between non-series stories. Just to complicate things further, "In the Rukh", the first Mowgli story to be written, which is the last chronologically, doesn't even appear in ''The Jungle Books'', and is so [[EarlyInstallmentWeirdness different from the rest]] that many readers regard it as [[CanonDiscontinuity non-canonic]]. However, they are all assembled in chronological order in ''[[ExactlyWhatItSaysOnTheTin All the Mowgli Stories]]''.

** In Creator/DanAbnett's ''Literature/GauntsGhosts'' novel ''First & Only'', flashbacks are interspaced throughout the novel -- and the flashbacks are not in chronological order, either. [[spoiler: It ends on a flashback, with a Chaos witch revealing to Gaunt information that caused him to take an action that determined much of the plot of the book.]]

* ''Literature/TheChroniclesOfNarnia'' are each linear stories (oh, except for ''Literature/PrinceCaspian''), but are written in non-chronological order (books 1-4 are followed by an interquel set during the events of book 1, during the time the four Pevensies ruled Narnia, and a prequel, set before Narnia ever existed, before book 7 jumps back to the normal order) and many fans of the series insist that they can only be appreciated that way because of the setup and payoffs; for instance, there are frequently allusions to past and future events that happened from earlier to later books, and ''Literature/TheMagiciansNephew'', the second-to-last, is a {{prequel}}. Huge gaps of NarniaTime transpire between each and every book.

* ''LightNovel/TheUnexploredSummonBloodSign'':

** Taken as a whole, all ''Warhammer'' novels are this, as there have been authors writing about the Horus Heresy (M30s), the War of the Beast (M32), the Sabbat Worlds Crusade (400s.M42) and various wars of the "modern" era (900s.M42-M43), among others, at the same time, as the Imperium's extremely long history and large size means that people can add a story in almost anywhere or anywhen in the timeline they like without having much impact on the big picture.

** Taken as a whole, all Warhammer novels are this, as there have been authors writing about the Horus Heresy (M30s), the War of the Beast (M32), the Sabbat Worlds Crusade (400s.M42) and various wars of the "modern" era (900s.M42-M43), among others, at the same time, as the Imperium's extremely long history and large size means that people can add a story in almost anywhere or anywhen in the timeline they like without having much impact on the big picture.