roman à clef

noun

ro·​man à clef rō-ˌmä(ⁿ)n-(ˌ)ä-ˈklā 

plural romans à clef rō-ˌmäⁿ-(ˌ)zä-ˈklā 

: a novel in which real persons or actual events figure under disguise

Did you know?

Unlock the fiction, open the door and see the very real people behind it, wrote Jeff Simon in The Buffalo News (March 19, 1998). That can be easily done when a roman à clef uses fictitious names to present thinly veiled depictions of well-known people or events. But what if only a few insiders know the real people or incidents? In the 1800s, such romans a clef sometimes included a key, a list matching fictional characters with their real-life counterparts, that helped readers recognize the players. Such keys made "roman a clef" (from a French phrase meaning "a novel with a key") an apt term for such works. Nowadays, there are no published keys in a roman à clef - merely veiled (or sometimes blatant) references that connect fact with fiction.

Examples of roman à clef in a Sentence

Recent Examples on the Web

Reader, that salad dressing is from Heartburn, Nora Ephron’s roman a clef about her messy divorce from Carl Bernstein. —Mark Peikert, Town & Country, 21 Oct. 2022

Plath’s roman a clef plops you into the 1950s, when women’s aspirations were chillingly constrained, partly by the kill switch of their sexuality. —BostonGlobe.com, 29 July 2022

Weisberger had spent time as Wintour’s personal assistant and many saw her novel as a roman a clef, with names changed hardly to protect the not-so-innocent. —Chris Jones, chicagotribune.com, 18 Sep. 2019

Neither combatant is mentioned in the novel; this is no roman a clef with characters standing in for them. —Susan Page, USA TODAY, 3 June 2018

Word History

Etymology

French, literally, novel with a key

First Known Use

1882, in the meaning defined above

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