Realiteitshonger: Arnon Grunberg en de (non-)fictie

This article surveys Arnon Grunberg’s literary journalism. It is shown that Grunberg uses non-fi ction as a means to an end: as a journalist, using immersion strategies such as ‘embedded jounalism’, he collects true stories he subsequently inserts into his fi ction. Grunberg started writing literary journalism in 2005. Previously, he had the reputation of being a ‘postmodern’ writer, which meant that his work and opinions were assumed to be deeply ironic and cynical. In his recent work (essays, novels, journalism) Grunberg repeatedly distances himself from this reputation. The claim of this article is that Grunberg’s turn to literary journalism can be understood as a consequence of his ‘Late Postmodern’ position: a position that reconsiders some of the consequences of postmodernism, without
completely rejecting the presupposition of postmodernism itself.