T H E A M E R I C A N A R C H I V I S T 702 B OOK R EVIEWS Amy Cooper Cary, Reviews Editor Narrating from the Archive: Novels, Records, Bureaucrats in the Modern Age By Marco Codebò. Madison, N.J.: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 2010. 197 pp. Hard cover. $51.50. ISBN 978-0-8386-4205-4. With the rise of postmodernism, the relationship between fiction and the archives has become an important area of scholastic exploration. Marco Codebò takes this exploration in new and intriguing directions in Narrating from the Archive. The monograph centers on the historical development of the archival novel from early modernity to the late twentieth century, a period of three hun- dred years spanning the eighteenth century to the rise of postmodernism. The archival novel, a fictional genre, serves as a vehicle for deepening the reader’s understanding of the nature of the novel and its cultural significance in the modern age. Codebò is a literary scholar, an experienced archival researcher, and a novelist. He is an assistant professor of French and Italian at Long Island University. He holds a PhD in comparative literature from the University of California at Santa Barbara and studied literature and philosophy at the University of Genoa. His scholarship focuses on nineteenth- and twentieth- century fiction in France, Italy, and Latin America. He is a specialist in the theory of the novel. His list of publications reveals a long-term engagement with the examination of the relationship between the modern novel, archives, and historiography, the focus of this monograph. His writing style reflects his background. It is highly academic, but also demonstrates novelistic sensibilities with its flowing narrative and arresting prose. Archivists, archival researchers, and literary scholars alike will be captivated by Codebò’s conception of the novel and its relation to the archives. In the introduction and initial two chapters, Codebò outlines his investigation and its objectives. In chapter 1, he provides the necessary background for the monograph by discussing the development of the novel in eighteenth-century England. The novel aimed at opening the private sphere for public debate. He argues that the novel’s primary objective is the creation of enduring records by recording reliable and relevant narratives through the observation and documentation of the experiences and lives of ordinary people. Archival tools for arranging information have been essential in meeting this objective. The archival novel is a genre “where the narrative stores records, bureaucratic writing 702 The American Archivist, Vol. 74 (Fall/Winter 2011) : 702–718