ИСТИНА

Both authors address to London in their works. Ackroyd wrote “London: The Biography” in 2000, and “London” by Rutherfurd was first published in 1997. The main similarity between the two is that both authors write about the history of the city from the very beginning to the modern time with special attention to the Victorian era. History becomes a tool of storytelling for them. Both authors make a fusion of fictional and non-fictional texts in their books, although the recipes are quite different. In these novels we see two distinctive cities, which are defined by the authors’ approaches. Ackroyd’s London is a character on its own, with its personality and fate, while Rutherfurd’s London is a uniting place for the characters. Despite this difference, both authors show us how close history and stories are. In Rutherfurd’s novel factional characters meet real historical personalities, and in Ackroyd’s biography we see all kinds of people, from royals and celebrities to commoners, who add to the face of the city. Both works blur the limits of genres. Rutherford mixes history and novel, Ackroyd mixes biography and fiction. This tendency continues in later novels by Rutherfurd, as well as, for example in Norfolk’s novels. It seems interesting to investigate the nature of these blurred genres, and how the concept of the place changes.