A wideranging exploration of the relationship between history and literatureThis issue of Alif explores the relationship between literature and history. What do history and literature have to say to each other What can literature say that history cannot and vice versa Do they work with or against each other How does the literary dimension of history affect its status and how does the historicity of literature in turn shape its being What would it mean to speak of a literariness of history today The terms literature and history in our title are intended to be construed in the broadest possible sense and to cover the widest possible range of genres and modalities of literary and historical writing. The recent proliferation of epithets and subdisciplines in the study of both literature and history has fundamentally changed both fields while raising further questions about the possibility of scholarly debates that traverse them.Contributors Balthazar I.