Novel, Biography, or Memoir? How Different Book Markets – and Maestro and Tidldibab – Navigate Stories Based on Real Lives

Choosing between a novel, a biography, and a memoir may appear to be a purely literary decision. In reality, it is a strategic one: it shapes publishing, marketing, legal risk, and the long-term international life of a book.

When a story is rooted in a real person – a musician, a thinker, a historical figure – the question becomes even sharper:

Am I writing about a life, or am I creating a literary world in which that life transforms?

To answer this, it helps to see how major book markets – Slovenia and Central Europe, the Anglo-American world, Germany, China, and India – understand the boundaries between novel, biography, and memoir. And where a book like Maestro and Tidldibab fits among them.

Three forms, three different promises

Biography

A biography promises fact, documentation, and chronology. It reconstructs a life from the outside in:

• archival sources,

• letters, interviews, documents,

• verifiable events and dates.

Readers expect objectivity and transparency about sources.

Memoir

A memoir promises inner truth rather than exhaustive fact. It is:

• autobiographical,

• subjective,

• thematically focused (a relationship, an illness, a career, a spiritual path),

• built around meaning and transformation rather than full life coverage.

Novel

A novel promises world-building. It may be based on real events or people, but its primary loyalty is to:

• structure,

• character arcs,

• theme, symbol, and metaphor,

• emotional and philosophical resonance.

A novel that grows from a real person is not “a failed biography”; it is a different answer to a different question: What happens when a real life becomes material for myth, philosophy, and story?

Slovenia & the region – fluid borders and authorial freedom

The Slovenian (and broader Central European) market is small, relational, and less rigidly segmented than the English-speaking world.

• Genre boundaries are soft and often fluid.

• Many authors start with “I’m writing my life” and gradually slide towards fiction, or vice versa.

• Editors often work across multiple genres; there are fewer specialized imprints just for biography or memoir.

This brings freedom, but also ambiguity:

• Books that are “half novel, half biography” are not unusual.

• Marketing focuses more on the author and less on precise shelving.

• For international rights, however, foreign publishers will ask: Is this fiction or non-fiction?

For a book with global ambition, clarity helps. A story may be hybrid in its inspiration, but on the shelf it must choose a jacket.

The Anglo-American world – genre as a commercial identity

In the US, UK, and other English-language markets, genre is not just descriptive, it is contractual.

Biography

• Strongly documented, often with notes and references.

• Frequently written about public figures: politicians, artists, entrepreneurs, scientists.

• Shelved and marketed as serious non-fiction.

Memoir

Currently one of the most dynamic non-fiction genres.Memoir is:

• highly crafted in structure and voice,

• focused on a theme (grief, addiction, migration, faith, illness, reinvention),

• strongly tied to the author’s personal brand.

Novel

Fiction must be clearly distinguished from non-fiction:

• agents and publishers insist on clean genre labelling,

• legal considerations (libel, defamation) matter when real persons are recognisable,

• readers are sensitive to being “sold” a memoir as a novel or vice versa.

Mis-categorisation can literally cost a book shelf space, reviews, and awards.

That’s why fictionalised biographies (novels based on real people) are clearly presented as novels, even when deeply rooted in research – for example:

• Lust for Life by Irving Stone – a fictionalized biography of Vincent van Gogh

• The Noise of Time by Julian Barnes – a novel about Dmitri Shostakovich’s life under Stalin

• Z: A Novel of Zelda Fitzgerald by Therese Anne Fowler – Zelda’s life reimagined in fiction

• Clara by Janice Galloway – a biographical novel about Clara Schumann

All four are based on real people, yet sold, reviewed, and translated as literary novels, not as biographies.

Germany – rigor, documentation, and clear lines

The German-language market (Germany, Austria, Switzerland) has a strong tradition of:

• Sachbuch (serious non-fiction),

• historically grounded biographies,

• and structurally disciplined memoirs.

Biographies

• Extensively researched, often with a semi-academic apparatus.

• Readers expect accuracy, context, and completeness.

Memoirs

• Often more traditional and chronological than Anglo-American “theme memoirs”.

• Embedded in broader cultural or national history.

Novels based on real people

German readers generally prefer clarity: Is this a Roman (fiction) or a Biographie (non-fiction)?

Hilary Mantel’s trilogy about Thomas Cromwell is a good English-language comparison: it is firmly marketed as historical fiction, even though it is built on meticulous archival work.

5. China – scale, state context, and the power of fiction

China has one of the largest book markets in the world; the retail market reached around 112.9 billion RMB in 2024.

Reports show that literature and novels account for the largest share of new book genres, ahead of humanities, history, and social sciences.

Key characteristics:

• Fiction – especially popular and online fiction – is a major driver of readership.

• Non-fiction segments (education, test prep, self-help) are also strong, but operate in a different ecosystem.

• Stories based on real people are influenced by censorship and political sensitivity:

  • direct biographies of controversial or politically sensitive figures can be problematic,

  • fictionalization often becomes the safer and more flexible form.

India – non-fiction strength, spiritual memoirs, and a growing fiction wave

India is one of the world’s major publishing nations, producing around 90,000 titles a year and ranking tenth globally.

Key market patterns:

• Traditionally, non-fiction outsells fiction; Penguin India’s leadership has cited a ratio of roughly 70:30 in sales contribution in favour of non-fiction.

• At the same time, recent analyses show strong growth in fiction, with trade data indicating a 30%+ revenue increase in fiction sales in 2024, outpacing non-fiction growth.

• Spiritual, political, and historical biographies and memoirs have deep roots – Gandhi’s The Story of My Experiments with Truth still sells thousands of copies annually and has recently seen a new boom in South-Indian translations.

This creates an interesting dynamic:

• Memoir and biography are trusted forms for stories of moral, spiritual, or political weight.

• Literary fiction in English and Indian languages is growing, but competes with a heavy non-fiction presence and a price-sensitive market.

Where Maestro and Tidldibab fits: a fictionalised life, not a biography

At the heart of Maestro and Tidldibab stands a real person: Ljuben Dimkaroski, trumpeter, researcher, visionary, and interpreter of the Divje Babe Neanderthal flute.

The book could have remained:

• a biography – structured, factual, documenting a life;

• a memoir – your intimate record of ten years of conversations and research.

Instead, it chose to become a novel.

Like other works of “biographical fiction” or “fictionalized biography”, it:

• keeps the ethical and factual core of a real life,

• but steps into myth, symbolism, and multiple time layers.

In this sense, Maestro and Tidldibab stands in a literary family with novels such as:

• Lust for Life (Irving Stone) – Van Gogh’s life turned into a vivid, emotional novel;

• The Noise of Time (Julian Barnes) – Shostakovich’s inner compromises under Stalin, imagined through fiction;

• Clara (Janice Galloway) – the life of Clara Schumann as a fully realised literary character;

• Z: A Novel of Zelda Fitzgerald (Therese Anne Fowler) – Zelda’s life retold as a novel that explores identity, art, and marriage.

All four are about real people, yet they are successful precisely because they:

• do not pretend to be neutral biographies,

• instead use fiction to reach emotional, philosophical, and artistic truth.

Slovenian parallels: when real lives become novels

Within the Slovenian context, there is a growing tradition of biographical novels – works that fictionalise the lives of real figures. The category “Slovenski biografski romani” is recognised as a distinct genre in library and bibliographic systems.

Examples include:

• Moj ljubljeni Tartini by Ivan Sivec – presented as the first Slovenian biographical novel about Giuseppe Tartini, the Piran-born violinist and composer.

• Rac by Petra Pogorevc – a biographical novel about the life of actor Radko Polič.

These works:

• take a real person,

• research their life,

• and then shape it into a narrative arc with scenes, dialogues, inner monologue, and symbolic motifs.

Maestro and Tidldibab, however, goes a step further:

• it does not only follow a single life,

• it braids together prehistory (Neanderthals), archaeomusicology, modern science, metaphysics, and art,

• it uses “Maestro” as a bridge between worlds – between sound and silence, science and myth, Slovenia and the deep past.

In Slovenian terms, it stands somewhere between:

• biografski roman (a novel about a real person),

• filozofski roman,

• and metafictional, musical, and archaeological fiction.

This is exactly the kind of hybridity that international literary markets increasingly value – provided the book is clearly labelled as a novel.

One life, many worlds – and why this is exactly a novel

A biography would have told what happened to Ljuben Dimkaroski. A memoir would have told what it meant to you.

A novel like Maestro and Tidldibab does something else:

• it asks what this life, this instrument, this discovery mean for all of us,

• it turns a real musician into a mythical figure and ethical mirror,

• it lets science, archaeology, history, and metaphysics play in the same orchestral score.

That is why, in the language of global publishing, Maestro and Tidldibab is not “a biography with some poetic moments”, but:

a work of literary fiction rooted in a real life – a novel that transforms biography into world-building.