Where it sits
Booth's actual axis — and the reason a sincere narrator can sit at the far right of it.
Tell it apart
| Aspect | Unreliable narrator | Lying narrator |
|---|---|---|
| Knows they mislead | Often not | Yes |
| Measured against | Implied author | The facts |
| Can be sincere | Yes | No |
| Reader's job | Reconstruct | Catch out |
A liar knows the truth and withholds it. An unreliable narrator often has no idea anything is wrong — a child, a self-deceiver, someone whose moral frame the book quietly declines to share. The best examples are sincere.
What it doesn't mean
Booth's criterion is divergence, not deception. A narrator is unreliable when they do not speak for or act in accordance with the norms of the implied author — the version of the author the book itself projects. A narrator can be scrupulously honest and still unreliable, because their values, understanding or perception are not the book's.
It is a relationship, and it needs two terms. Reliability is measured against the implied author, a concept Booth coined in the same 1961 book. Without that second term there is nothing to be unreliable relative to — which is why the concept cannot be lifted out of Booth's framework and still function in his sense. Later narratologists, Ansgar Nünning above all, rebuilt it around the reader's frame of reference instead, on the grounds that the implied author was never defined tightly enough to measure anything against.
What it really means
The phrase reads like plain English, and lying is indeed one way to be an unreliable narrator — Humbert Humbert and Dr Sheppard are liars by design. But it is not the criterion, and that is the part worth knowing.
Wayne C. Booth introduced the term in The Rhetoric of Fiction in 1961, and his criterion is not honesty. A narrator is unreliable when they do not speak for or act in accordance with the norms of the implied author.
Everything hangs on that second phrase, which Booth coined in the same book. The implied author is not the real writer and not the narrator — it is the version of an author that the book itself projects: the values and judgements the text conveys, whatever the narrator is saying. Every book has one. You assemble it as you read, usually without noticing.
Which makes unreliability a relationship, not a property. Not this narrator lies, but this narrator and this book do not agree — and the reader can feel the gap.
That is why the strongest examples are completely sincere. A child narrating something they cannot interpret. A man describing his own decency while the book quietly documents otherwise. Nobody is deceiving anyone. The narrator is reporting faithfully from inside a frame the book declines to share — and the reader's job is not to catch a liar out but to reconstruct what is actually happening from a report that isn't wrong so much as wrongly angled.
One consequence worth noticing. If reliability is measured against the implied author, the concept cannot be lifted out of Booth's framework and still work in his sense. Drop the implied author and there is nothing left to be unreliable relative to — just a narrator, saying things, with no second reading available. Later narratologists took the other road. Ansgar Nünning rebuilt unreliability around the reader's frame of reference — the reader's sense that the narrator's account and the rest of the text do not line up — on the grounds that Booth's implied author was never defined tightly enough to measure anything against.
Where it comes from
English — not to be depended on
Latin narrator — a teller, from narrare 'to relate'
A technical term of narratology rather than a natural phrase — which is why its ordinary-English reading (a narrator who lies) is not what it means.
- 1961
Wayne C. Booth introduces the term in The Rhetoric of Fiction, alongside the concept of the implied author.
- 1961
In the same book Booth coins 'implied author' — the standard against which a narrator's reliability is measured. The two terms are one idea.
In real life
- Agatha Christie's The Murder of Roger Ackroyd (1926) is narrated by the village doctor, Dr Sheppard, who turns out to be the murderer. He has hidden his guilt by leaving things out, without writing anything untrue.
- Mark Twain's Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1884): Huck is entirely honest and believes he is doing wrong by helping Jim escape slavery. The reader sees that his conscience is better than the society that trained it, so the gap between his judgement and the book's is the point.
- Edgar Allan Poe's 'The Tell-Tale Heart' (1843) opens with the narrator insisting he is not mad, and then gives a careful account of a murder as proof of his sanity.
- Kazuo Ishiguro's The Remains of the Day (1989): the butler Stevens insists his employer, Lord Darlington, was an honourable man, while his own memories keep supplying evidence that he was not. He is not lying so much as protecting the life he built.
- A narrator who tells you, three times in one chapter, that she is completely over her ex: nothing she says is false, exactly, but you have stopped taking her word for it.
Questions
Q01Who coined the term?
Wayne C. Booth, in The Rhetoric of Fiction (1961), alongside the concept of the implied author. The two were introduced together and depend on each other.
Q02What is the implied author?
The version of an author that a particular book projects — its values, judgements and norms as the text conveys them. Not the real person, and not the narrator. It is the standard reliability is measured against.
Q03Can a third-person narrator be unreliable?
Yes, though it is rarer and harder to sustain, because third-person narration usually claims the book's own authority. The effect when it does happen is correspondingly stronger.