ИСТИНА

Biography has always been and might continue to remain one of the crucial genres in literature. It serves as a mirror for self-reflexion and as a so-called impression of culture at a given period of time. In this paper I am going to demonstrate how Peter Ackroyd in his books goes even further and transforms this into a new kind of narrative. Traditionally biography is associated with a certain individual, but he blurs the boundaries between traditional biography and cultural studies. Ackroyd combines features of biography, cultural study and fiction to create what he calls the biography of place or geobiography. The first book in the series was “London: the Biography” (2000), then came “Thames: Sacred River” (2007) and “Venice: Pure City” (2009). I believe it might be considered as a significant trend in modern literature, since Orhan Pamuk, a Turkish writer, uses the similar technique in his “Istanbul: Memories and the City” (2003). The place now becomes the sum of all activities in it. This type of biography also meets the need in a new type of urban description. Now the group of people is in the focus of attention, not an individual. What Ackroyd shows is the type of symbiosis between place and its inhabitants.